Most economists agree that AI is a general purpose technology (GPT) like the steam engine
electricity and the computer. AI will drive innovation in all sectors of the economy for the
foreseeable future. Practical AI for Business Leaders Product Managers and Entrepreneurs is a
technical guidebook for the business leader or anyone responsible for leading AI-related
initiatives in their organization. The book can also be used as a foundation to explore the
ethical implications of AI. Authors Alfred Essa and Shirin Mojarad provide a gentle
introduction to foundational topics in AI. Each topic is framed as a triad: concept theory
and practice. The concept chapters develop the intuition culminating in a practical case
study. The theory chapters reveal the underlying technical machinery. The practice chapters
provide code in Python to implement the models discussed in the case study. With this book
readers will learn: The technical foundations of machine learning and deep learning How to
apply the core technical concepts to solve business problems The different methods used to
evaluate AI models How to understand model development as a tradeoff between accuracy and
generalization How to represent the computational aspects of AI using vectors and matrices How
to express the models in Python by using machine learning libraries such as scikit-learn
statsmodels and keras
