I found this book to be an informative and helpful look at AI. I am someone who had zero knowledge on AI, and was curious to learn more because as mentioned in the book - it felt like it had appeared out of no where. I found this to be a very grounding read that helped me to understand AI. I found the first half easy to understand (#1-3). I feel like I fully grasped those concepts. I found the second half more challenging (#4-6), but I felt like I understood the gist of what was being said. It's likely my own lack of knowledge here, but that's really my only complaint. The first half I was fully able to comprehend, so I was able to read quickly, the second half felt like I was a bit too dumb to understand. Funny enough, I had chatgpt dumb down the concepts for me to understand better... I would recommend this though, and I enjoyed the short length.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC! This is a short, comprehensive history of AI. While a lot of it was familiar to me, because I have read several books on the topic, there were still ideas and information here that felt new to me. I will definitely purchase a copy for my school library.

As posted to my GoodReads

Copy of my GoodReads review below

This book would probably be excellent after being reviewed by a good technical editor. In its current state, it lacks structure.

There are lots of anecdotes in there that range from useful to just entertaining. Some will really help you understand what AI is and how it came to be. The others will just waste your time, especially in a condensed book that is supposed to cut through the babble.

I would also have liked schemas, a high level view that explains how different fields relate to each other. It is a lot easier to explain complex technical things if you provide a way to visualize them.

All in all, I enjoyed it despite the structural flaws. The author seems like a very fun and witty person, with the typical academic mindset that I love. Definitely someone fascinating to have coffee with, or spend around 100 pages sitting with.

This was a tough one to rate.
STRONG DISCLAIMER: I read a very early copy which was noted as an advanced, uncorrected early copy, so I imagine most of my qualms may be addressed with a final round of editing which is likely in progress now.

Pros: I like the structure of the book and I think Walsh really gets to the nitty gritty of what AI is, how it functions, and how it has developed over time. He clearly knows the subject and has distilled it down to the two phases of development and 6 essential ideas that comprise AI. These are super clear and explained well.

Cons: the writing was choppy and all over the place. Sometimes a timeline of an idea would be linear, the next point may work backward in history with no explainer. Sometimes a person would be discussed for several paragraphs, then be introduced, then immediately move to a new subject. There were random asides about people that were totally irrelevant to the book and could easily have been cut from “The Shortest History of AI”. Things just seemed out of order, to the point where I wondered if my digital ARC had a file issue.

All in all, I give it a three star. It helps frame AI very well and his look to the future is super insightful. Structure is awesome but execution was in need of another edit, which I expect it will have at this early stage. I would consider reading again after publication to see how the final version turns out and could easily bump it up to a 4 or 4.5 star book.

Thanks to NetGalley, the author, and Black Inc and The Experiment for the ARC.