AI & I: An Intellectual History of Artificial Intelligence

by Eugene Charniak, Michael L. Littman (foreword)

A concise and illuminating history of the field of artificial intelligence from one of its earliest and most respected pioneers.AI & I is an intellectual history of the field of artificial intelligence from the perspective of one of its first practitioners Eugene Charniak. Charniak entered the field in 1967, roughly 12 years after AI’s founding, and was involved in many of AI’s formative milestones. In this book, he traces the trajectory of breakthroughs and disappointments of the discipline up to the current day, clearly and engagingly demystifying this oft revered and misunderstood technology. His argument is controversial, but that classical AI has been almost uniformly unsuccessful and that the modern, deep learning approach should be viewed as the foundation for all the exciting developments that are to come.Written for the scientifically educated layperson, this book chronicles the history of the field of AI, starting with its origin, in 1956, as a topic for a small academic workshop held at Dartmouth University. From there, the author covers reasoning and knowledge representation; reasoning under uncertainty; chess; computer vision; speech recognition; language acquisition; deep learning; and learning writ large. Ultimately, Charniak takes issue with the controversy of AI—the fear that its invention means the end of jobs, creativity, and potentially even humans as a species—and explains why such concerns are unfounded. Instead, he believes that we should embrace the technology and all its potential to benefit society.

Genres: Artificial Intelligence, Nonfiction, History

196 pages, Paperback

Published October 8, 2024

About the author

Eugene Charniak is Professor of Computer Science at Brown University. He is the author of Statistical Language Learning (MIT Press) and other books.

Reviews

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed it. It's a lightweight personal account of a scientist working in AI for 50 years. It's quite introspective about what went wrong with AI for many decades and, for an elderly researcher, refreshingly optimistic about the future (old scholars can become overly cynical or defensive of their past accomplishments, but not Charniak). It's a popular account so if you are interested in AI, it's likely that you won't learn too much you don't already know. But a 50-year perspective is useful to hear nonetheless.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book and one of my favorite AI books for 2026. Full list of recommended AI books here - https://blog.marketingdatascience.ai/....

Charniak provides a front row review of AI history quite unlike any other. You’ll appreciate the way he connects the dots between the experiments of 30 or 40 years ago and the breakthroughs we’re using right now. He strips away the hype and the “magic” of AI, replacing it with a clear, logical progression of math and linguistics — including the roles of linear algebra and calculus as the backbone of these systems. It’s a rewarding read that reminds us that while our tools have become incredibly powerful, the core quest to understand intelligence is a journey that’s been decades in the making. Although the book is technical in parts, it’s well written and just requires careful reading.

The only reason I didn’t give this book 5 stars was that it had quite a few grammar errors and typos. Maybe that was intentional so that we knew it wasn’t AI written? Actually, you can tell it was written by a human based on the writing style. Anyway, wish the proofreader was more diligent.

Great read if you’re interested in AI history like me

[Corbin Routier · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in learning about the history of Artificial Intelligence. This book is easy to understand, categorizes advancements in technology by date ranges, and provides a bibliography for the source material the author references. I purchased four additional books for future learning using the bibliography as well as the author's recommendations.

Page xvii - "This book is my stab at writing AI's intellectual history as a coherent whole... the story of the major ideas that have undergirded the discipline... This history makes the case that AI from the start had the right goal - writing computer programs that demonstrate intelligent behavior - but was completely wrong about how to achieve it."

[Paul Perrone · Rating 5 out of 5]

a great survey of ai by a great man

Eugene covered the gamut here in clear and simple terms, with characteristic humor and humility. Great read on the history of AI from a man who’s been in the thick of it since the beginning.