Bill Gates reviews the five best books he read in 2021

As is tradition, the billionaire Bill Gates, owner of Microsoft, revealed in his blog the five best books that was read during 2021.

Once again, Gates reveals that his favorite subjects are science, technology, and great literature.

This is what the American tycoon thought of each book, on his page gatesnotes.com:

1. ‘A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence’ (A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence), by Jeff Hawkins: “Few topics have captured the imagination of science fiction writers like artificial intelligence. If you are interested in learning more about what it takes to create true AI, this book offers a fascinating theory. Hawkins may be better known as the co- inventor of PalmPilot, but he has spent decades thinking about the connections between neuroscience and machine learning, and there is no better introduction to his thinking than this book. “

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2. The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing and the Future of the Human Race (The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race), by Walter Isaacson: “The CRISPR gene editing system is one of the coolest and perhaps most important scientific breakthroughs of the last decade. I know it from my work at the foundation (we are funding several projects using the technology), but I still learned a lot of this comprehensive and accessible book on its discovery by Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Jennifer Doudna and her colleagues Isaacson does a good job of highlighting the most important ethical issues surrounding gene editing. “

3. Klara and the Sun (Klara and the Sun), by Kazuo Ishiguro: “I love a good robot story, and Ishiguro’s novel about an ‘artificial friend’ of a sick girl is no exception. Although it takes place in a dystopian future, robots are not a force for evil. Instead, they serve to keep people company. This book made me think about what life would be like with super-intelligent robots and whether we will treat these types of machines as pieces of technology or as something else. “

4. Hamnet, by Maggie O’Farrell: “If you are a fan of Shakespeare, you will love this poignant novel about how his personal life may have influenced the writing of one of his most famous plays. O’Farrell has built his story on two facts that we know to be true about” The Bard. “: His son Hamnet died at the age of 11, and a couple of years later, Shakespeare wrote a tragedy called Hamlet. I especially enjoyed reading about his wife, Anne, who is pictured here as an almost supernatural figure.”

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5. Project Ave María (Project Hail Mary), by Andy Weir: “Like most people, I learned about Weir’s writing through The Martian. His latest novel is a crazy story about a high school science teacher who wakes up in a different star system with no memory of how he got there. The rest of the story is about how he uses science and engineering to save the day. It’s a fun read and I finished it all in one weekend.

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