AI for the Rest of Us: An Illustrated Introduction
By (Author) Sairam Sundaresan
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Bloomsbury Academic
30th October 2025
United Kingdom
General
Non Fiction
Computing and Information Technology
Artificial intelligence (AI)
Paperback
240
Width 140mm, Height 216mm
We're in a transformative era. The printing press made information readily available, electricity powered our dreams, and the industrial revolution reshaped our work. Now, AI is poised to transform nearly every facet of our lives, from how we work to how we play, create, and even think.
But here's the catch: AI isn't as simple as operating a printing press or plugging into electricity. It's elusive, a tad mysterious, and sometimes feels impenetrable, like a complex puzzle without a manual.
We live in an age where AI "experts" are emerging from the woodwork faster than weeds in an abandoned lawn. Thanks to their tireless work, social media is flooded with the hallucinated wisdom of AI. These click-baity posts are reshared in echo chambers, leaving the general public misinformed and harboring fears about the future. While there is no doubt that AI will impact our future, there are several myths running around that need to be busted.
This book assumes that you come from neither background. In fact, it assumes you have almost no knowledge of machine learning, coding, or any other technical prerequisite. We'll dive into fundamental AI concepts and work our way up to more complex ideas, all presented in a no-nonsense style enriched with ample illustrations, humor, and storytelling. Both timeless algorithms and modern blockbuster applications are covered so that you have the context of what was (and on occasion still is) used and what powers the things we love and use today.
Sairam Sundaresan is a machine learning scientist with over 13 years of experience in the tech industry. Currently, he oversees advanced AI projects at Intel Labs. His work, centered on deep learning algorithm research and development, has earned him several patents and led to numerous high-impact publications. Sundaresan began my career at Qualcomm as a senior machine learning engineer, working on groundbreaking Computer Vision and Machine Learning projects for multimedia applications. His research and development on real-time 3D reconstruction, object tracking, and the development of Qualcomm's FastCV library earned significant recognition and was featured in Forbes. After nearly eight years at Qualcomm, Sundarsean joined Intel Corporation as a Deep Learning Engineer, and served as a machine learning lead and mentor at the Frontier Development Lab for three years. Sundaresan created "Gradient Ascent," a fast-growing newsletter that demystifies AI for non-technical audiences, which was featured on wired.com