Juliet Frost

Even as more and more data becomes available, many of us have a view of the world that doesn’t correspond to reality. On probabilities in particular, people tend to be completely clueless. Here Edouard Mathieu, Head of Data at Oxford-based research group Our World in Data, recommends books to help readers not only use data to better understand the world, but also make better decisions in daily life.

Normally at Five Books we ask experts to recommend the best books in their field and talk to us about them in an interview, either in person, by phone or via Zoom. After a busy end-of-year, our human beings needed a few days off. Instead, we decided to ask the AI bot, ChatGPT, to recommend books to us on the topic of AI. Being an AI doesn’t necessarily make the chatbot an expert on AI books, but we thought it might have some ideas. Do not fear, next week we’ll be back with real human beings (unless readers feel the AI did a better job, in which case we’re happy to step aside).