AI Through the Experts’ Eyes

Communicating Complex Ideas

AI Through the Experts’ Eyes is a highly accessible, useful, timely, and interesting book on the workflow around artificial intelligence and machine learning and the discourse and writing practices of scientists and researchers. By providing an example of the discourse practices for these scientists and the problem of what he defines as terminology drift, John Gallagher will prompt reflection on terminology use in helpful and constructive ways.
Jim Ridolfo, University of Kentucky

AI Through the Experts’ Eyes reveals the humanity behind artificial intelligence. John R. Gallagher foregrounds practitioners’ stories and the real-life culture from which these disruptive technologies emerge. Representing reality to computers is at the heart of AI, and Gallagher spotlights the challenges of doing so under the combined pressures of the break-neck pace of these technologies’ growth and ever-present hype, both external and internal. Drawing on more than 100 interviews with AI scientists and practitioners, the author showcases the ways AI researchers face these challenges through writing and communicating their findings, including how they define terms, work in teams, share their research, and approach ethics.

about the author

John R. Gallagher

John R. Gallagher is professor of English at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he also is a faculty affiliate at the School of Information Sciences. He is the author of Case Study Research in the Digital Age and Update Culture and the Afterlife of Digital Writing. He fuses qualitative inquiry with natural language processing and machine learning to study social media.

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John R. Gallagher