Why Another Book about AI?

You’re reading an excerpt of Making Things Think: How AI and Deep Learning Power the Products We Use, by Giuliano Giacaglia. Purchase the book to support the author and the ad-free Holloway reading experience. You get instant digital access, plus future updates.

I was born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil. I was lucky enough to be one of the two Brazilians selected to the undergraduate program at MIT. Coming to the US to study was a dream come true. I was really into mathematics and ended up publishing some articles in the field,* but I ended up loving computer science, specifically focusing on artificial intelligence.

I’ve since spent almost a decade in the field of artificial intelligence, from my Masters in machine learning to my time working on a company that personalizes emails and ads for the largest e-commerce brands in the world. Over these years, I’ve realized how much these systems were affecting people’s everyday lives, from self-driving car software to recommending videos. One credible prediction is that artificial intelligence could scale from about $2.5 trillion to $87 trillion in enterprise value by 2030; for comparison, the internet has generated around $12 trillion dollars of enterprise value from 1997 to 2021.*

Even though these systems are everywhere and will become more important over time as they become more capable, few people have a concrete idea of how they work. On top of that, we see both fanfare and fear in the news about the capability of these systems. But the headlines often dramatize certain problems, focus on unrealistic scenarios, and neglect important facts about how AI and recent developments in machine learning work—and are likely to affect our lives.

As an engineer, I believe you should start with the facts. This book aims to explain how these systems work so you can have an informed opinion, and assess for yourself what is reality and what is not.

But to do that, you also need context. Looking to the past (including inaccurate predictions from the past) informs our view of the future. So the book covers the history of artificial intelligence, going over its evolution and how the systems have been developed. I hope this work can give an intelligent reader a practical and realistic understanding of the past, present, and possible future of artificial intelligence.