Andrew Lowe - Artificial Intelligence Foundations

the authors 2021

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Andrew Lowe is an engineer specialising in using computers to solve the challenges engineers face. He started as a nuclear design apprentice when computers were replacing drawing boards. Learning from experience has been a fundamental part of his career, and artificial intelligence helps him in his day-to-day work some of the problems he has worked on can only be solved with supercomputers. He obtained his PhD from Cambridge and has worked in academia and industry. He has also helped an AI start-up company gain traction. He is married with two daughters, and lives and works in the Lake District, a World Heritage Site. He volunteers with local organisations to give people better opportunities.

Steve Lawless has always had a keen interest in science and technology, and has worked in the computer industry for over 40 years. He has trained literally thousands of people to give them the skills they need to make computers work. He knows Andy from volunteering at the local ski club. He runs a successful training company who have a worldwide customer base. He has written more than 100 training courses on IT, and enjoys making technology easy to understand and accessible. He is married with three sons and two daughters, and also lives and works in the Lake District.

We would like to thank our families, who have been patient. It is amazing how much time it takes to pull together learning from experience in an easy-to-understand book.

The technical side of AI can be challenging, so the numerous teachers, lecturers, supervisors, tutors and mentors are too many to mention individually. Thank you; you know who you are. Especially to those who have made their lectures and notes available on the web so everyone can learn.

We would like to thank Dr Paul Mort, of Sellafield Sites Ltd, who has been a keen enthusiast and supporter of the BCS AI Essentials and AI Foundation courses. His challenging questions while reviewing the courses made us think very carefully. Paul is a roboticist, and we were highly aware that AI is a much more enriching and broader subject than machine learning. Indeed, we have all left the digital revolution behind in the third industrial revolution, and we are now well on our way to the fifth. The AI agent is a really important and fundamental concept that we can easily overlook if we think AI is a digital machine learning technology.