This work provides a look at the individuals and companies that have sought to develop and market the technology known as artificial intelligence. The driving force behind AI is to create computers that will emulate human behaviour, particularly in the area of thinking and reasoning.
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An intriguing study of men and women who have tried--and are still trying--to attain one of mankind's oldest goals: the creation of intelligence in something of our own design. The Brain Makers shows how artifical intelligence is being developed for both "Traces the development of Artificial Intelligence through specific historical references. Includes pointed arguments for and against the development of a technology that will change the way computers ""behave"". Explores the premise and the promises of ma". -- Sams Pub.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A good history of AI . . .,
By Bill Somerville (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Brain Makers (Hardcover)
Having been involved in the technology business for way too many years, I found Newquist's book to be a pretty accurate account of what went on in the AI world. It's not a book about technology or programming, so if you're looking for technical data, try a textbook. But if you want to know why artifical intelligence died a slow and ugly death, you'll have all your questions answered here.
The book, as its subtitle suggests, is about "genius, ego, and greed"--the personalites involved in AI. It's not about the importance of neural networks vs the relevance of expert systems. As for the "discot" review that says to take some of the information with a grain of salt, Newquist includes nearly 15 pages of footnotes to back up his research. That should be good enough for most readers. All in all, I found this book to be an insightful observation and reflection on what AI could have been. I'd recommend it over books by AI participants like Raymond Kurzweil, who obviously have personal motivations to keep selling AI snake oil in their self-promoting books.
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating Facts, Questionable Interpretation,
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This review is from: The Brain Makers (Hardcover)
I found this book both interesting and limited. Having encountered AI technologies and personalities at various points in my career, it was interesting to get from the author a more comprehensive view of what was going at the personal and organizational levels during the period covered by the book. The author's view of these matters was culled primarily from his experience as editor of a newsletter called AI Trends during that period. I visualize the author writing this book by pulling from stacks of old newsletters, article clippings, corporate brochures, and notes from interviews and discussions he had as a journalist on the beat. I see this book's value mainly in that it summarizes a lot of information about AI people and organizations in one place, organizing it into thematic chapters.The author inserts his own perspective throughout the book, with mixed results. He is attracted to the dirt, the scandal, the quirky personality, and this leads to some interesting reading, interesting in the way you might listen to the town gossip, in spite of yourself. I had to take his gossip with a grain of salt, because some of it was based on questionable interpretations of the author, but enough was substantiated to be interesting. For example, the rise and fall of AI companies is an interesting story that parallels that the recent dot com cycle, and the AI era has lessons to teach us about the business and management of technology. However the author's bias toward airing dirty laundry sometimes comes across as a sneering attitude, or at least over-dramatization, and some of the ugly pictures he paints seem ugly because of his paint, not the events he reports. For example, he presumes to classify management talent as "A-teamers" (capable) or "B-teamers" (less capable), then identifies hiring B-teamers as evidence of poor management in some companies. The author clearly does not have a deep understanding of AI technology, and this limits his ability to achieve two things he tries to do in the book: (1) explain AI in laymen's terms, and (2) interpret the technical significance, shortfalls, and potential of AI technology. He is on target some of the time, and sometimes misleading, or even wrong. For example, as the author correctly points out, the publication of the book Perceptrons by Minsky and Papert was an intriguing chapter in AI, since it effectively shut off research in neural networks for a long time. However, his discussion of the essence of Perceptron's criticism of neural networks is misleading: he says it was that neural networks cannot ".. learn new things from past experience..", when actually the main criticism was that certain kinds of problems can never be solved by neural networks. His discussion of how researchers eventually countered Perceptron's arguments is also misleading: he cites Hopfields's showing that recurrent neural networks can do things the brain does (an important contribution), when the more relevant direct answer to the Perceptron dilema was the development of good training algorithms for multi-layer nets that could solve the "impossible" problems. I enjoyed reading this rather long (488 pages) book. It moved along quickly, and it was interesting to find answers to a lot of "whatever happened to ..... ? " questions. The AI era covered by this book was filled with fascinating stories and people. I would have preferred a more penetrating and knowing analysis of AI technology itself, that would make it easier to separate good ideas from business blunders, circumstances from fundamental flaws. And I wanted to have less of a feeling that the author was just guessing at some of his insider insights.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Engrossing study of smart guys coming unstuck,
This review is from: The Brain Makers (Hardcover)
I read this book when it first came out, and found it compelling. Meticulously researched but with plenty of human interest, it's hard to imagine a better book on such a subject. As someone who has carried out AI research (in neural computing), I also found the author's account of what went wrong with the previous AI revolution (in expert systems) very valuable in highlighting the dangers of hype. AI has since become mainstream, and I hope the author might consider a followup. In short, highly recommended, though today perhaps in need of an update.
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