Top 10
Five curated lists — the best way into AI through other people’s work
Everything else on this site is a record of what happened. This section is a reading, watching and listening list: the documentaries, books, talks, interviews and failures that explain the field better than a timeline entry can.
The lists are opinionated on purpose. Each is ranked by how much it adds to someone who already knows the outline, not by acclaim or sales, and each entry says plainly what it is good for and where it falls short. Entries link back into the timeline wherever they touch a person, organisation or concept the site already covers.
TED & TEDx Talks
10Ten talks, none longer than twenty minutes
Documentaries
10Ten films that show the field rather than explain it
Books
10Ten books on how the field got here
Interviews
20Ten from the current moment, ten from the archive
AI Flops
10Ten failures worth more than most successes
What actually works on people
- Talks win on reach.
- Ten to twenty minutes, free, no commitment. Conti’s talk alone has outdrawn most of the documentaries and books here combined, and Shane’s is the single most shareable item across all five lists.
- Documentaries work when they have a character.
- AlphaGo has a protagonist, a rival and a defeat. Coded Bias has one researcher, one discovery, one fight. The essayistic films are for people who are already interested.
- Books are the narrowest, and the two exceptions prove why.
- Genius Makers works as a group biography with rivalries and personalities; The Worlds I See works because a memoir carries readers who do not care about neural networks.