This book is an intellectual history of artificial intelligence research, told from the perspective of one of the field's early practitioners, Eugene Charniak. He entered the field in 1967 and participated in many of the events that shaped its subsequent development. Here, he traces the trajectory of the discipline’s breakthroughs and disappointments up to the present day, offering a clear and engaging explanation of a technology that is often either idolized or misunderstood. His central thesis is controversial yet compelling: classical AI failed almost entirely, whereas modern deep learning provides the foundation upon which all future breakthroughs will be built.

Written for the educated lay reader, the book recounts the history of AI from its inception at the 1956 Dartmouth workshop. The author covers topics such as logical reasoning and knowledge representation, reasoning under uncertainty, chess, computer vision, speech recognition, deep learning, and learning in a broader sense. Finally, Charniak addresses the alarmists who fear that AI will rob us of our jobs and creativity—or even destroy humanity—explaining why these fears are unfounded. He is convinced that we should boldly embrace this technology and harness its full potential for the benefit of society.