A Brief History of Intelligence

Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains

De: Max S. Bennett

Narrado por: George Newbern

Equal parts Sapiens, Behave, and Superintelligence, but wholly original in scope, A Brief History of Intelligence offers a paradigm shift for how we understand neuroscience and AI. Artificial intelligence entrepreneur Max Bennett chronicles the five “breakthroughs” in the evolution of human intelligence and reveals what brains of the past can tell us about the AI of tomorrow.

In the last decade, capabilities of artificial intelligence that had long been the realm of science fiction have, for the first time, become our reality. AI is now able to produce original art, identify tumors in pictures, and even steer our cars. And yet, large gaps remain in what modern AI systems can achieve—indeed, human brains still easily perform intellectual feats that we can’t replicate in AI systems. How is it possible that AI can beat a grandmaster at chess but can’t effectively load a dishwasher? As AI entrepreneur Max Bennett compellingly argues, finding the answer requires diving into the billion-year history of how the human brain evolved; a history filled with countless half-starts, calamities, and clever innovations. Not only do our brains have a story to tell—the future of AI may depend on it.

Now, in A Brief History of Intelligence, Bennett bridges the gap between neuroscience and AI to tell the brain’s evolutionary story, revealing how understanding that story can help shape the next generation of AI breakthroughs. Deploying a fresh perspective and working with the support of many top minds in neuroscience, Bennett consolidates this immense history into an approachable new framework, identifying the “Five Breakthroughs” that mark the brain’s most important evolutionary leaps forward. Each breakthrough brings new insight into the biggest mysteries of human intelligence. Containing fascinating corollaries to developments in AI, A Brief History of Intelligence shows where current AI systems have matched or surpassed our brains, as well as where AI systems still fall short. Simply put, until AI systems successfully replicate each part of our brain’s long journey, AI systems will fail to exhibit human-like intelligence.

Endorsed and lauded by many of the top neuroscientists in the field today, Bennett’s work synthesizes the most relevant scientific knowledge and cutting-edge research into an easy-to-understand and riveting evolutionary story. With sweeping scope and stunning insights, A Brief History of Intelligence proves that understanding the arc of our brain’s history can unlock the tools for successfully navigating our technological future.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2023 Max Solomon Bennett (P)2023 HarperCollins Publishers

new favorite book

I didn’t expect to enjoy this book nearly this much. incredible. Will be looking for more books by max bennett un the future to scratch this new itch

Building to the end

A lot of detail on the origin of the brain. However, it was necessary to tell the story and cone to the conclusion. Made me think differently.

Excellent book but with some glaring misconceptions

I liked the book overall both for its content and its pace. I was especially excited when at the beginning the author specified that he doesn’t agree with the anthropocentric view of humans as higher intelligence and that only by necessity of writing a book on human-like AI he won’t go into the other types of intelligence. Unfortunately, the anthropocentric view still came through in various chapters through the statement like “even advanced invertebrates such as crabs, ants or bees can’t do this or that or the other thing”. I don’t mind such statements per se if they’re correct, but there have been some major misconceptions. Here’s one of a few examples: author claim that bees and ants don’t have a spatial map then cites an outdated experiment with ants not being able to find their way home. Now we know that these old experiments suffered from anthropocentric view on how the spatial maps are formed. Once bees’ way of sending the world around them was taken into account, experiments definitely showed their ability to form, remember and utilize space maps (this was back in 2005, with a lot of research since then, so the author can’t claim ignorance). This is a missed opportunity in the book: once you show the independent emergence of complex characteristics you can then use the differences between the systems to boil down the neural patterns to few common links.

Required reading for every human

Absolutely phenomenal summary of an enormous amount of biological evolution that’s enabled us to be where we are today. Must read for anyone interested in understanding our unique position in time.

Impressive!

My background is in molecular biology and biochemistry but I haven't read much on neuroscience. From what I understand the author has no formal background in biology, he majored in math and economics in college and was involved in AI-related technologies later. However, I'm really impressed by his overall understanding of basic biology.

I'm only 1/5 of the way through the book but so far I've really enjoyed this listen -- and I've been learning some things along the way about early animal evolution that I have not heard before.

For example, why the evolution of bilateral symmetry may have arose: to aid locomotion -- and how this led to what the author labels the first major breakthrough in intelligence evolution. Bilateral animals evolve to go really fast only in one direction, when we want to go in another direction we turn to face it and then run (think about how slow you would run to an object 90 degrees from you if you could not turn and run toward it). But to coordinate the decision making process on which way to run required primitive bilateral organisms to process a multitude of signals (coming from many different cells) and coordinate the response. Thus we can begin to understand why complex brains arose in mobile multicellular animals and not in plants or more 'primitive' radial symmetric and less mobile creatures like sea anemones.

The author then ties in this first step in the evolution of animal intelligence to the makers of the first commercially successful robot, irobot's Roomba vaccum cleaner by 3 members of MIT's Artificial Intelligence lab.

Looking forward to the rest of the book and congratulations to the author on his research and on how well he explains things and a very interesting read (audible)!

Thorough, entertaining and insightful

While it was a lengthy foray into the subject matter, it was a very entertaining and insightful approach to examine our history where we have been in a relatively short time and where we are going in an exceedingly accelerating pace. Well done!

Really eye opening into intelligence, thinking and why animals and humans do and think the way they do

Very impressive work and succinct, yet informative publication on a timely subject.

Excellent work presented in a succinct, yet informative format. Thank you for writing on this timeline subject.

Most thought provoking and relevant

Must read for anyone in technology and psychology. Wonderful attempt at connecting the dots of what makes us uniquely human and how we can build tools to optimize humanity.

fascinating and easy ro understand

The way this was laid out and explained made it relatively easy to understand for non-scientists and those who are non-technical. it gives you have an idea of what he's talking about and how it all relates to the potential for artificial intelligence