A Brief History of Intelligence

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

By: Max Bennett

Narrated by: George Newbern

Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins

Publisher's summary

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

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

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.

Flawed fundamental assumptions, good function rvw

The author, as noted in his subtitle, used evolution throughouut the book as a pre-condition to the each "advancement" in nervous system function. As background, I am a student of Warren McCullough and have worked in the AI field since 1962. I found this book educational in explaining the functional characteristics of various neural structures. I've been working primarily in the biophysical field of infectious disease since 2020, but would like to get back to full time AI. Back in the 90s I worked on a framework for representing knowledge that became the visual language called UML (Universal Modeling Language). With the existence of that language, many books have been written as "frameworks" for coding functions in different disciplines. My discipline was Semiconductor Manufacturing, and a framework to guide the design of all manner of applications associated with that field became a NIST standard, represented as UML. The author has presented, in words, patterns of neural function. He has presented those in an interesting and entertaining progression. He uses the word evolution. I prefer the term "natural selection." I will be looking for books and papers providing the neural framework structures, in UML, that implement the functionality he discusses with anticipation. Maybe they exist? But book provides a good word-oriented representation of selective progression of function from nematodes to humans. For AI technologists, it's a good audio book to listen to before diving in to neural network implementation (or even other implementations),

I Understand Us Now

Such a simply laid out explanation of where we came from and how we think, ending with the question "who do we want to be?"

wow, inspiring, rich

Great book, what else to say. Powerful ideas explained beautifully. The performance was great by the reader.

I completed the book in three sessions because of the quality of information presented. Good Job!

The thesis of the book drew me in. The content was well organized and very interesting. I had not read on these topics before. This book has planted seeds. I completed the book in three sessions because of the quality of information presented.
There were detectable splices of the reader's efforts.. These were distracting.

Rationality wins another one.

A logical and understandable explanation of a complex subject. No need to resorting to magical thinking required.

Utterly fascinating

The best audiobook I have listened to. This book completely changed the way I think about thinking.

incredible book, but wtf is with the Jekyll and Hyde narration ?

it's like they use 2 different ai voices in order to generate the audiobook. every once in a while, it'll suddenly switch from voice 1 to voice 2

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)!