In Genius Makers, Cade Metz delivers the definitive take on how AI technology came to be and what its arrival will mean for us humans. The book relies on tireless reporting and delightful writing to bring to life one of the most surprising and important stories of our time. If you want to read one book to understand AI, this is the one.

This colourful page-turner puts artificial intelligence into a human perspective. Through the lives of Geoff Hinton and other major players, Metz explains this transformative technology and makes the quest thrilling.

Cade Metz has produced an enthralling narrative of the advance of artificial intelligence. He describes the key personalities, the seminal meetings and the crucial breakthroughs with his customary eye for detail, building them into a dramatic history of this era-defining technology.

This is the inside story of how AI entered Google, Facebook, and the rest of high tech. It is also the story of how Silicon Valley and its mega-bucks infiltrated AI and changed its course. Chock full of behind-the-scenes anecdotes and wry humour – we learn the true tale of the technology that is transforming humanity.

One day soon, when computers are safely driving our roads and speaking to us in complete sentences, we’ll look back at Cade Metz’s elegant, sweeping Genius Makers as their birth story – the Genesis for an age of sentient machines.

Many books proclaim that true artificial intelligence is on the horizon, and this expert overview makes a convincing case that genuine AI is . . . Metz tells his engrossing story through the lives of a dozen geniuses, scores of brilliant men (mostly), and an ongoing, cutthroat industrial and academic arms race . . . A must-read, fully-up-to-date report on the holy grail of computing.

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

Colourful and readable . . . As computers steadily encroach into almost every corner of our lives, these AI researchers are emerging as the architects of our algorithmic age, shaping the information we absorb and the decisions we make. As you would expect from a New York Times technology reporter, Metz’s book draws on extensive access and meticulous research.

The book brings forth a compelling narrative that does not only put into perspective what AI means to us humans, but also tells a definitive story of how a project confined to the fringes of scientific community became a buzzword for humanity . . . it’s a story that shows both the inventive best of humankind and its darker side.

I hope that Cade Metz is already working on the sequel to this . . . an author with a firm grip on his field, he makes a knowledgeable guide to the intriguing corners of Silicon Valley and beyond.