GEB, and its rebuttal, Emperor's New Mind [1], are both fantastic books. Both are must reads regardless of one's views on AI (or approaches to AI).
I never bought Hofstadter's thesis -- am solidly in Penrose camp -- and find it interesting that Penrose went on to develop his thesis even further [2][3] while Hofstadter has not. That said, Hofstadter is clearly a far more engaging and talented writer, and in context of Symbolic AI, his book outshines (imho) Minsky's Society of Mind [4] (which I found rather underwhelming).
There is a mild sense of tragedy about Hofstadter. Something about massive early success..
I never bought Hofstadter's thesis -- am solidly in Penrose camp -- and find it interesting that Penrose went on to develop his thesis even further [2][3] while Hofstadter has not. That said, Hofstadter is clearly a far more engaging and talented writer, and in context of Symbolic AI, his book outshines (imho) Minsky's Society of Mind [4] (which I found rather underwhelming).
There is a mild sense of tragedy about Hofstadter. Something about massive early success..
[1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/179744.The_Emperor_s_New...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Penrose#Physics_and_cons...
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestrated_objective_reducti...
[4]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/326790.The_Society_of_Mi...