Not a book but if you’re ML curious, I enjoyed reading the World Models paper. It was the first ML paper I read all the way through, and I found it approachable but still technically informative. I later learned the author has been in the AI game for decades, which explains his clear explanations and comfort with the material.

PDF link at this page: https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.10122

The interactive web page explains what you’d be reading about: https://worldmodels.github.io/