Short Book Review
I read Genius Makers by Cade Metz in September of 2021, and it’s such an
awestruck-un-putdownable intelligence race happening, a superbly enlightening dive into the history and drama behind the rise of artificial intelligence. The author “Cade Metz” does a great job of blending the science with the human stories that propelled AI from niche research to a world-changing force.
The book really feels like an inside look into the lives of the scientists, engineers, and tech visionaries who pushed the field forward—names like Geoffrey Hinton, Yann LeCun, Demis Hassabis, and Fei-Fei Li. Each of them brought something different to the table, and Metz doesn’t shy away from showing their quirks, disagreements, and ambitions. Metz profiles these “genius makers”—visionaries who made breakthroughs in neural networks, deep learning, and machine learning, fueling a technological arms race.
The book reveals an intense, high-stakes race to control the future of artificial intelligence; how, over recent decades, global tech giants and pioneering researchers have battled to develop the most powerful AI technologies and claim dominance in a field that’s reshaping everything from how we communicate to how economies function.
What’s fascinating is how this field shifted from academia into Big Tech, with companies like Google, Facebook, and OpenAI investing billions to stay at the forefront. The tension between making AI open and advancing it within the secrecy of corporate walls is the central theme.
There’s a palpable sense of competition throughout, as companies and nations push for advancements that bring both promise and peril. The race to lead in AI is not just about creating smarter technologies but also about raising serious ethical questions. Metz explores the risks of bias, privacy invasion, and job displacement that come with unleashing AI on the world. Metz also brings up the ethical concerns that have started bubbling up as AI’s potential for misuse has become clearer. It’s both inspiring and sobering to see how far we’ve come and what risks lie ahead. For anyone interested in AI’s origins and where it might take us, this book is a must-read!
I could write more as a summary on the book but that will take away the excitement of reading the book from start to finish. Get it from these links below and you can finish reading it in a weekend.
amazon.com: https://tinyurl.com/amz-bk-gm
amazon.in: https://tinyurl.com/amz-in-bk-gm