Viking pre-empts Summerfield's book on 'how AI actually works'

Viking has pre-empted These Strange New Minds: How to Understand AI, a book on "how AI actually works" by Christopher Summerfield, professor of cognitive neuroscience at Oxford University and staff research scientist at Google DeepMind.

Connor Brown, editorial director, acquired world English language rights from Rebecca Carter at Rebecca Carter Literary. US rights were pre-empted by Terezia Cicel at Viking US. These Strange New Minds will be published in hardback in autumn 2024.

The book’s synopsis says: "A new wave of disarmingly human-like chatbots, such as ChatGPT, Claude and Bard, appear to be able to talk and reason like us – and are beginning to transform everything we do. It is vital we understand how they work. Can AI ‘think’, ‘know’ and ‘understand’? What are its values? Whose biases is it perpetuating? Can it lie and if so, could we tell? Does their arrival threaten our very existence?

"To answer these questions, neuroscientist and AI researcher Christopher Summerfield charts the evolution of AI, from its earliest origins in the 17th century to today’s Large Language Models, new tools that put the knowledge of all the world’s experts at your fingertips."

Brown said: “Forget techno-utopias or predictions of doom, These Strange New Minds is the first authoritative book on how AI – the technology that is revolutionising our world – actually works. Chris’ unique insight into the co-evolution of AI and neuroscience gives him an unrivalled purview of AI’s cognitive, technical, and social aspects, and we are thrilled to be publishing him at Viking.”