Max Bennett (1)

This is a book of evolutionary neuroscience, starting with the primordial soup and proceeding through time to the modern human brain. The author focuses on the five big breakthroughs in the development of human intelligence and correlates them to what is currently happening in the development of artificial intelligence. The five breakthroughs include: directional movement, learning through positive and negative reinforcement, imagining various outcomes before selecting a course of action, show more social learning (including mimicking and anticipating future needs), and the development of communication through language.

The author outlines these breakthroughs in an accessible manner. The book is well organized and logically explained. It requires the reader’s keen interest in neuroscience. It is not a book to pick up on a whim. Even though the title mentions “a brief history,” be prepared to go into detail about each breakthrough. I particularly enjoyed the explanations of how artificial intelligence currently performs in each of the five areas. Perhaps I should not be surprised at how much behavioral psychology is included, and I was familiar with many of the experiments mentioned. If you are interested in a journey through the evolution of the human brain, this book will fill the bill. It will be interesting to see how closely AI will be able to mimic the real thing. So far, it is not even close. show less

I found this book very intriguing and fascinating as the author takes us through 5 breakthroughs of life on Earth. Through these 5 transformations, the author shows us how life developed something called "intelligence" to survive and thrive.

It compares these breakthroughs with the current state of knowledge and history of artificial intelligence. The author's ingenious way of articulating while keeping the language simple is what kept me hooked to the book till the end.

The unique thing about show more this book is that it's a book on 'intelligence', but there's no definition of intelligence in the book. Similarly, it says 'brief history..', but is actually quite in-depth and delves into the details of many things that have happened in our evolution. Not a nitpick though, but found it pleasantly surprising. show less