I just finished Gödel, Escher, Bach and would like recommendations for further reading about AI. I’m definitely not a tech wiz, so something toward the kiddie end of the pool for starters would be great.
Anyone know of anything worth reading?
As someone who works in the field–such as it is today–let me just say, it’s all lies, damn lies and statistics.
(grumbles off to have morning coffee)
B-b-but, it’s in BOOKS. That makes it TRUE. 
The Stories of Ibis by Hiroshi Yamamoto. It is a wonderful book. More realistic (in my opinion) than most other AI books I’ve read. I’ve loaned it out to several people and everyone has loved it. Highly recommended.
fyi: this is fiction, but set in a realistic universe, if that matters.
Not sure if you mean text book books or fiction books.
If fiction Iain Banks’ “Culture” series has oodles and oodles of AI
If you’re looking for a textbook then Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach by Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig is excellent (although it’s aimed at the intermediate to advanced level).
The problem with writing a pop culture book about AI is that there’s really no there there. What we have now is basically a bunch of tricks that work well on a limited domain, but there’s no unifying theory or view that makes it all fit together.
Sorry for any confusion. I was looking for non-fiction, not a novel. I’ll take a look at all of the suggestions, though, fiction and non-! Thanks.
I took AI about 40 years ago, and have kept up, but I don’t know of any book which I’d recommend, or is anywhere close to books on cosmology or string theory. There are quite a few on the wonderful things AI will bring up - someday - and quite a few on how it is all a scam, but nothing fair and balanced.
An example. After the excellent “Soul of a New Machine” was published, someone decided to do something similar for AI. The result: Into the Heart of the Mind where he followed some AI grad students at Berkeley in 1982. Unfortunately for him, their paper submitted to the AI conference that year got rejected. It is one penny on Amazon, and not worth it.