How AI Ate the World

<p><strong style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>UKTN Technology Book of the Year</strong></p><p><strong style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>'Easily the most comprehensive book on AI I have read so far covering all the key issues.' </strong><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Peter Hunt Business & Tech Correspondent Evening Standard</em></p><p><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>How AI Ate the World: A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence - and Its Long Future i</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>s your essential guide to how AI went from sci‑fi fantasy to the engine quietly (and not so quietly) reshaping work art politics and everyday life.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Blending clear explanation with vivid storytelling and investigative reporting Chris Stokel‑Walker takes you from the early visions of Alan Turing and the Dartmouth conference through the AI winters and chip wars to today's boom in ChatGPT OpenAI Midjourney large language models (LLMs) and generative AI. Along the way you'll see how AI spread from research labs into search engines social media finance healthcare policing the creative industries and your phone.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Through real‑world stories - including the viral Pope in a puffer jacket deepfake created with Midjourney - the book shows how easy‑to‑use AI tools can delight disrupt and deceive and why almost nobody using them has really thought through the consequences.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Inside this book you'll discover</span></p><ul><li><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>The origins of artificial intelligence: magic mushrooms and Midjourney the fathers of AI the first AI chess programs the birth of OpenAI and the partnership with Microsoft.</span></li><li><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>How AI winters Cold War machine translation projects and government cuts nearly killed AI - and how it came roaring back.</span></li><li><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>The battle for AI chips and the hardware arms race driving today's machine learning and deep learning boom.</span></li><li><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>How AI is transforming work: automation productivity tools AI doomer fears about job losses and the new role of prompt engineers.</span></li><li><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>The creative explosion - and backlash - around AI art AI music and generative image models such as Midjourney.</span></li><li><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>The dark side of AI: misinformation disinformation deepfakes profit before people and coded bias that can entrench racism sexism and inequality.</span></li><li><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>AI's environmental impact and the huge energy cost of training the latest models.</span></li></ul><p></p><p></p>