Genius Makers

"The Navy revealed the embryo of an electronic computer today that it expects will be able to walk, talk, see, write, reproduce itself, and be conscious of its existence," read the article that appeared the next morning in the New York Times. A second article, in the Sunday edition, said that Navy officials hesitated to call this a machine because it was "so much like a human being without life." Rosenblatt grew to resent the way the popular press covered the event, particularly a headline in Oklahoma ("Frankenstein Monster Designed by Navy That Thinks"). In later years, among colleagues and in his published writings, he described the project in more measured terms. He insisted it was not an attempt at artificial intelligence, and he acknowledged its limitations. Still, the idea slipped from his grasp.

The Perceptron was one of the first neural networks, an early incarnation of the technology Geoff Hinton would auction to the highest bidder more than fifty years later. But before it reached that $44 million moment, let alone the extravagant future predicted across the pages of the New York Times in the summer of 1958, it descended into academic obscurity. By the early 1970s, after those lavish predictions met the limitations of Rosenblatt's technology, the idea was all but dead.

Frank Rosenblatt was born on July 11, 1928, in New Rochelle, New York, just north of the Bronx. He attended Bronx Science, the elite public high school that eventually produced eight Nobel laureates, six Pulitzer Prize winners, eight National Medal of Science winners, and three recipients of the Turing Award, the worldÕs top computer science prize. A small, thin man with fleshy jowls and short, dark, wavy hair who wore standard-issue black-rimmed glasses, Rosenblatt was trained in psychology, but his interests were much wider. In 1953, the New York Times published a small story describing an early computer he used to crunch data for his PhD thesis. Called EPAC-short for electronic profile-analyzing computer-it analyzed the psychological profiles of his patients. As the years passed, he came to believe that machines could provide an even greater und

informative, enjoyable work With vivid detail, Metz has crafted an accessible narrative that will keep readers turning the pages."
Library Journal (starred review)

"A must-read, fully-up-to-date report on the holy grail of computing."
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"With well-crafted storytelling and extensive research, Metz captures the thrill and promise of technological innovation."
Booklist

"Written by an expert who has exclusive access to each of these companies and others who are working in this field this is a rich, character-driven narrative that captures an extraordinary moment in the history of technology."
Irish Tech News

"In Genius Makers, Cade Metz delivers the definitive take on how AI technology came to be and what its arrival will mean for us humans. The book relies on tireless reporting and delightful writing to bring to life one of the most surprising and important stories of our time. If you want to read one book to understand AI, this is the one."
Ashlee Vance, New York Times bestselling author of Elon Musk

"This colorful page-turner puts artificial intelligence into a human perspective. Through the lives of Geoff Hinton and other major players, Metz explains this transformative technology and makes the quest thrilling."
Walter Isaacson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci, Steve Jobs, and The Innovators

"Cade Metz has produced an enthralling narrative of the advance of artificial intelligence. He describes the key personalities, the seminal meetings and the crucial breakthroughs with his customary eye for detail, building them into a dramatic history of this era-defining technology."
Kai-Fu Lee, author of AI Superpowers

"This is the inside story of how AI entered Google, Facebook, and the rest of high tech.  It is also the story of how Silicon Valley and its megabucks infiltrated AI and changed its course. Chock full of behind-the-scenes anecdotes and wry humor we learn the true tale of the technology that is transforming humanity."
Oren Etzioni, chief executive, Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence

"One day soon, when computers are safely driving our roads and speaking to us in complete sentences, we'll look back at Cade Metz's elegant, sweeping Genius Makers as their birth story the Genesis for an age of sentient machines."
Brad Stone, author of The Everything Store and The Upstarts
 
"Genius Makers is an enthralling, definitive modern history of artificial intelligence. Cade Metz's detailed narrative reveals the crucial decisions made by executives, developers and investors and foreshadows the disproportionately large effect they will have on our futures."
Amy Webb, author of The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity