A Brief History of Intelligence

‘I found this book amazing. I read it through quickly because it was so interesting, then turned around and read much of it again’ Daniel Kahneman, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics and bestselling author of Thinking Fast & Slow

‘I’ve been recommending A Brief History of Intelligence to everyone I know. A truly novel, beautifully crafted thesis on what intelligence is and how it has developed since the dawn of life itself’ Angela Duckworth, University of Pennsylvania and bestselling author of Grit

‘Introduces us to an enormous range of concepts in biology, evolution, brain science and AI… there is plenty of food for thought here’ TLS

‘Absolutely riveting. A Brief History of Intelligence is a spellbinding and fascinating tour of the origins of the human species, and a reminder that the human story began long before Homo sapiens. An illuminating, revelatory account of who we are and how we got here’ Brian Christian, bestselling author of Algorithms to Live By and The Alignment Problem

‘If you are interested in understanding brains or in building human-like general AI, you should read this book. This is a forward-looking book masquerading as history. A mind-boggling amount of details of anatomy, physiology and behavior of a variety of nervous systems are brought together in a coherent evolutionary tale and explained in their computational contexts. It is a joy to read – don’t miss it!’ Dileep George, DeepMind, cofounder of Vicarious AI

As a pioneering artificial intelligence entrepreneur, Max Bennett is well positioned to bridge the gap between AI and evolutionary neuroscience. He spent the bulk of his career as the Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer of Bluecore, one of the fastest growing AI companies in the world, most recently valued at over $1 billion dollars.

Max taught himself neuroscience and has subsequently published numerous scientific papers in peer reviewed scientific journals on the topics of evolutionary neuroscience, intelligence and the neocortex. He has spoken at multiple conferences and groups on the topic of neuroscience and AI, including Numenta, Karl Friston’s group, and AI4.