Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought A.I. to Google, Facebook, and the World by Cade Metz, reviewed

Interesting overview of the story to date of the evolution of AI, and the impact on our lives. Genius Makers:Written by Cade Metz, and available from 18 March 2021, published by Random House Business, Hardback, £20

Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought A.I. to Google, Facebook, and the World by Cade Metz, reviewed

The history of AI has been told many times, but this book successfully takes it all the way up to the very present day almost. Naturally we are not done yet either, but if you want to get a solid grounding from it’s early evolution in the 50s, with Marvin Minsky the legendary computer scientist and others, then this book is a good starting point.

We once had the pleasure of listening to Geoffrey Hinton at a George Boole 200 anniversary commemoration at UCC, who is an ancestor of Hinton, as well as the founding father of computational thinking, based on Boolean logic. Hinton spoke well, in an intelligent and accessible way. Metz captures this aspect of Hinton, who is one of the key figures in this book.

Overall Metz is fortunate that many of the current dynamic and leading thinkers in this field are still alive and accessible too. The book is thorough and well researched. It provides a good grounding in the challenges and issues that AI has faced, and the big ethical issues that will need to be addressed going forwards too. It is also written in an accessible and non jargon heady manner, which ensures that it is a good read for the general reader.

It does show that there is currently a talent war taking place as the various FANG companies fight to attract this talent, even if they are not exactly sure how to use it when they get it. Metz does also address the ethical issues raised by Google working with the US military, and FB failing to really take any responsibility at all for the potential misuse of it’s platform and the various ways it has been manipulated.

Overall it is a great read, thought provoking, readable and a really useful AI primer.

More about the book

Genius Makers tells the story of AI from pioneering days to current achievements to future potential. At the same time, it takes the lid off what has effectively become an AI arms race between Google, Microsoft, Facebook and OpenAI, in which Google may be the clear frontrunner at present, but Facebook has shown itself to be both nimble and innovative, and OpenAI, the company recently founded by Elon Musk and Sam Altman, has made itself the confident upstart of the pack. Their personalities and business strategies are already changing the tech landscape in dramatic ways.

As well as explaining and exploring artificial intelligence and showing how individuals and companies are reaching for it, Cade Metz poses serious ethical questions about the enormous advances made with AI and how it will change humanity. Will it carve out a giant hole in our job market? Are these companies forgetting the existential realities of creating machines that behave like humans?

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.

Cade Metz is a New York Times tech correspondent, formerly of Wired in San Francisco, where he covers Google, Facebook, artificial intelligence, bitcoin, and other cutting-edge stories. Previously, he was the US Editor of The Register, the London-based website that’s among the world’s most popular science and technology news publications.

His Wired features on Google’s race to solve the ancient game of Go through artificial intelligence and on how Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook are changing the face of disaster response were both cover stories. He has also appeared on NPR, CNBC and MSNBC.

See more Irish Tech News stories here.