One of the pens behind the press
Arun Devaraj
Computer Science · AI and data · Clever machines in plain words
Arun explains the machines everybody has an opinion about and very few people have looked inside. He builds each idea up from something ordinary, a spam filter, a spreadsheet, a game of twenty questions, until the clever part stops looking like magic and starts looking like arithmetic done very fast. He is careful about what these systems cannot do, which is the part that usually gets left out. Yes, he has read the paper.
4 books in print · 6 journal pieces
Books by Arun Devaraj
Do NOTHING
A Plain Guide to the Automated Future, from Driverless Tractors to Robot Kitchens and Homes That Fix Themselves
Minds Made of Math
What Artificial Intelligence Really Is, Every Form It Takes, and Its Whole Story from Ancient Myths to the Age of Agents
Life After AI
How Artificial Intelligence Will Change Your Work, Money, Home, Health and Happiness, and How to Thrive Through All of It
AI Goes Vertical
How Artificial Intelligence Really Works, Why It Is Accelerating, and Every Future It Could Build or Break
Arun Devaraj in the journal
- Can a machine be surprised? A reader wrote in to ask
- Why you can ask the machine the same thing twice and get two different answers
- A reader asks why the machine sounds so certain when it is wrong
- It is mostly just guessing the next word, and that turns out to be a great deal
- Everyone wants to talk about AI agents
- The confident machine, and what that confidence is really worth