A book I am delighted to recommend: Tout comprendre (ou presque) sur l’intelligence artificielle, by Olivier Cappé and Claire Marc, forthcoming from CNRS Éditions on 10 April 2025.
I have the pleasure of sharing my office with Olivier, so I was able to witness the creation of this fantastic book. Seeing the finished result is therefore particularly special.
Olivier is a CNRS senior researcher in the computer science department at ENS, and Claire is a science communicator and graphic facilitator. Their collaboration brings together scientific expertise and visual explanation in a book for a French-speaking general audience.
The book looks behind the word “AI”: where the field comes from, how its methods work, what resources they require, and what they can—and cannot—do. It connects these ideas to applications such as image generation and robotics, while addressing the limitations and challenges of these technologies.
What I particularly appreciate is the ambition to give readers the tools to form their own opinions. Understanding the underlying ideas is essential to taking part in the discussion about AI. This is a lovely, accessible entry point for curious readers, and a book I warmly recommend sharing.