Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R Hofstadter. Douglas is a cognitive and computer scientist. He holds a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Oregon.
This book published in 1979 won both the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction and a National Book Award for Science.
There have been so many references to this book that it remains difficult to compile. So, in short, Melanie Mitchell’s book Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans outlines her collaboration with Douglas in writing CopyCat.
Since publication 45 years ago, I would certainly suggest listening to the The Episodic Podcast book review episode. I found that listening to a chapter review before reading the chapter helped me digest Douglas’ insights. Then after re-listened to the chapter for a full understanding. While this is certainly rare to recommend, it helped me better understand this book.
I have been digesting a series of resources regarding this book. In Google’s podcast interview with Melanie, she acknowledges visiting Google’s AI team with Douglas and learning his book is required reading.
So, Douglas is exploring the work of logician Kurt Gödel, artist M. C. Escher, and composer Johann Sebastian Bach. He expands beyond their creative concepts in mathematics, symmetry, and intelligence. In fact, Douglas is revealing his analysis is actually not about their amazingly creative work, but instead is illustrating how cognition emerges.
Systems, Strange Loops, and AI
In fact, the buzz about this book is how Douglas educates us on ‘Strange Loops’ that represent brain activities leading to consciousness. The ‘loop’ is the combination of art and music with math and computing.
Douglas begins the book by addressing intelligence, explaining the playground in which this takes place and is viewed as Systems. Then he illustrates isomorphism mathematically as his pq-system invention. In his system, we are able to perceive that the string –p—q—– means “2 plus 3 equals 5” and the illustrations are impressive.
In addition, Douglas is addressing how today we cannot duplicate system of the brain from a formal system. So he writes how moving to so many rules and still unprovable elements, that Artificial Intelligence researchers cannot today mimic the the human brain.
A game changing book
In conclusion, Gödel, Escher, Bach is certainly one of the most complex and insightful book that I have read in some time. Actually this book took me months to digest and understand. A giant work and a must read for anyone seeking to learn where AI is aiming to be one day.