Machines that Think

From the first dreams of mechanical minds to today’s intelligent machines, Machines that Think: History of Artificial Intelligence follows humanity’s long pursuit to build systems that can learn, reason, and create.

Herman Strange traces AI’s journey from its theoretical roots in the 1950s to the breakthroughs that power modern life machine learning, robotics, and neural networks driving everything from search engines to self-driving cars. Along the way, he captures the people behind the progress the pioneers, skeptics, and visionaries who redefined what it means to think.

But this story isn’t just about innovation. Strange examines the questions that now shadow every advance: bias, privacy, job displacement, and surveillance. He asks what happens when technology designed to serve us begins to shape us instead.

Through crisp storytelling and grounded insight, Machines that Think reveals both the brilliance and the burden of artificial intelligence.

As machines grow smarter, one question remains can we stay the wiser species?

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The Rise of Cognitive Computing series takes readers inside the evolution of artificial intelligence from its early theories to its growing influence on how we live and work today. Drawing on deep research and clear analysis, it explores both the promise and the peril of a technology reshaping the modern world.

While AI inspires excitement and innovation, it also raises urgent questions about ethics, control, and responsibility. The series doesn’t shy away from those questions. In The Dark Side of AI, readers trace the history of artificial intelligence and its uses for both progress and harm from autonomous weapons and mass surveillance to the growing threat of job displacement.

Later volumes dive deeper into the breakthroughs driving AI’s rise, its integration across industries like healthcare, finance, and transportation, and the ripple effects of those changes on economies and societies. The books also examine related fields such as blockchain and cryptocurrency, revealing how these systems intertwine with AI’s development and governance.

Balanced, accessible, and thought-provoking, Rise of Cognitive Computing invites readers to look beyond the hype and see AI as it truly is powerful, complex, and deeply human in its consequences.

Because understanding the machines we build is the first step to shaping the world they’ll change.