The second edition offers two new chapters, several new exercises, and other improvements. The book can be used as a textbook at the advanced undergraduate or introductory graduate level and as a professional reference for practicing engineers and computer scientists. Readers should have some familiarity with machine structures, computer programming, basic discrete mathematics and algorithms, and signals and systems.
Lee explores how engineers use models and abstraction to build inventive artificial worlds and to give us things that we never dreamed of—for example, the ability to carry in our pockets everything humans have ever published. He argues, however, that artificial intelligence’s goal of reproducing human cognitive functions in computers vastly underestimates the potential of these machines. In his view, technology is able to augment our cognitive and physical capabilities while we nurture, develop, and propagate the systems themselves. Complementarity is more likely than competition.