The Brain Makers

"The Brain Makers" is the definitive history of artificial intelligence (AI). From ancient myth to modern computers, the book explores the attempt to create machines that behave and think like humans. Along the way, readers meet the mythical Talas, Frankenstein's monster, Edgar Allan Poe's chess player, and the first mechanical robots--and are then introduced to the work of Alan Turing and the secretive military research labs of the 1960s. An entire industry was built around AI in the 1980s, one which came crashing down once the promises of thinking machines proved to be more than researchers could accomplish. Everything changed in 2015, when AI came roaring back as the most fascinating–and feared–technology ever developed. All along, HP Newquist, the leading writer in the AI industry for more than a decade, gives an insider's perspective to the history, providing detailed accounts of the genius, ego, and greed that helped to make artificial intelligence the one technology that governments, corporations, and researchers around the world agree will change the world.