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A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, Ai, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains Hardcover – 24 October 2023
by Max S Bennett (Author)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars (557)
"I found this book amazing. I read it through quickly because it was so interesting, then turned around and read much of it again."--Daniel Kahneman, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics and bestselling author of Thinking Fast & Slow
"I've been recommending A Brief History of Intelligence to everyone I know. A truly novel, beautifully crafted thesis on what intelligence is and how it has developed since the dawn of life itself."--Angela Duckworth, bestselling author of Grit
Equal parts Sapiens, Behave, and Superintelligence, but wholly original in scope, A Brief History of Intelligence offers a paradigm shift for how we understand neuroscience and AI. Artificial intelligence entrepreneur Max Bennett chronicles the five "breakthroughs" in the evolution of human intelligence and reveals what brains of the past can tell us about the AI of tomorrow.
In the last decade, capabilities of artificial intelligence that had long been the realm of science fiction have, for the first time, become our reality. AI is now able to produce original art, identify tumors in pictures, and even steer our cars. And yet, large gaps remain in what modern AI systems can achieve--indeed, human brains still easily perform intellectual feats that we can't replicate in AI systems. How is it possible that AI can beat a grandmaster at chess but can't effectively load a dishwasher? As AI entrepreneur Max Bennett compellingly argues, finding the answer requires diving into the billion-year history of how the human brain evolved; a history filled with countless half-starts, calamities, and clever innovations. Not only do our brains have a story to tell--the future of AI may depend on it.
Now, in A Brief History of Intelligence, Bennett bridges the gap between neuroscience and AI to tell the brain's evolutionary story, revealing how understanding that story can help shape the next generation of AI breakthroughs. Deploying a fresh perspective and working with the support of many top minds in neuroscience, Bennett consolidates this immense history into an approachable new framework, identifying the "Five Breakthroughs" that mark the brain's most important evolutionary leaps forward. Each breakthrough brings new insight into the biggest mysteries of human intelligence. Containing fascinating corollaries to developments in AI, A Brief History of Intelligence shows where current AI systems have matched or surpassed our brains, as well as where AI systems still fall short. Simply put, until AI systems successfully replicate each part of our brain's long journey, AI systems will fail to exhibit human-like intelligence.
Endorsed and lauded by many of the top neuroscientists in the field today, Bennett's work synthesizes the most relevant scientific knowledge and cutting-edge research into an easy-to-understand and riveting evolutionary story. With sweeping scope and stunning insights, A Brief History of Intelligence proves that understanding the arc of our brain's history can unlock the tools for successfully navigating our technological future.
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24 October 2023
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"I found this book amazing. I read it through quickly because it was so interesting, then turned around and read much of it again." -- Daniel Kahneman, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics and bestselling author of Thinking Fast & Slow
"I've been recommending A Brief History of Intelligence to everyone I know. A truly novel, beautifully crafted thesis on what intelligence is and how it has developed since the dawn of life itself." -- Angela Duckworth, bestselling author of Grit
"Absolutely riveting. A Brief History of Intelligence is a spellbinding and fascinating tour of the origins of the human species, and a reminder that the human story began long before Homo sapiens. An illuminating, revelatory account of who we are and how we got here." -- Brian Christian, best-selling author of Algorithms to Live By and The Alignment Problem
"This book discloses everything you always wanted to know about the brain (but were afraid to ask). It is an incredible resource. It assimilates every discovery in neuroscience--over the last century--within a beautifully crafted evolutionary narrative. The ensuing story shows how an incremental elaboration of brains can be traced from ancient worms to the mindful, curious creatures we have become. The synthesis works perfectly. Its coherence obscures the almost encyclopedic reach of this treatment." -- Karl Friston, University College London, #1 most-cited neuroscientist in the world
"If you are interested in understanding brains or in building human-like general AI, you should read this book. This is a forward-looking book masquerading as history. A mind-boggling amount of details of anatomy, physiology, and behavior of a variety of nervous systems are brought together in a coherent evolutionary tale and explained in their computational contexts. It is a joy to read--don't miss it!" -- Dileep George, DeepMind, cofounder of Vicarious AI
"Max Bennett published two scientific papers on brain evolution that blew me away. Now he has turned these into a fabulous book, A Brief History of Intelligence." -- Joseph LeDoux, New York University, best-selling author of Anxious and The Deep History of Ourselves
"Max Bennett has written a marvelous book about the history of intelligence. I have been studying the brain for forty years, I wish I could have read Bennett's book when I started on my journey, it would have saved me a lot of time. This book is a unique and valuable resource for anyone wanting to understand intelligence." -- Jeff Hawkins, cofounder of Numenta and Palm Computing, bestselling author of A Thousand Brains and On Intelligence
"With a truly mind-boggling scope, A Brief History of Intelligence integrates the most relevant scientific knowledge to paint the big picture of how the human mind emerged. . . . This text is embracing, ambitious, and lusciously enlightening but still remains strictly orientated to the facts, and avoids unsubstantiated speculation. This is both a piece of art as well as science. . . . I am deeply impressed by this brave project of explaining entire human nature in the grand evolutionary frame. But I am even more impressed that Max Bennett succeeded in this virtually impossible task." -- Kurt Kotrschal, University of Vienna, winner of 2010 Austrian Scientist of the Year Award and author of the critically acclaimed Wolf-Dog-Human
"Written with gusto and spirit, with intellectual courage and playfulness. It is eye-opening and intellectually invigorating . . . the work of a young and fresh mind that has no axes to grind and comes to the subject with untarnished joyful curiosity, intelligence, and courage. Everyone, from young students to established academics will find it rewarding." -- Eva Jablonka, Tel Aviv University, coauthor of Evolution in Four Dimensions and The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul
"Max Bennett gives a lively account of how brains evolved and how the brain works today. A Brief History of Intelligence is engaging, comprehensive, and brimming with novel insights." -- Kent Berridge, professor of psychology and neuroscience at University of Michigan and winner of the Grawemeyer Award for Psychology
"If you're in the least bit curious about that three-pound gray blob between your ears, read this book. Max Bennett's entertaining and enlightening natural history of brains is a tour de force--as refreshing as it is entertaining. It made my brain happy." -- Jonathan Balcombe, PhD, bestselling author of What a Fish Knows and Super Fly
"This book provides an exciting journey through the keys to human intelligence and has important things to say about who we are and what it means to be human. The five 'breakthroughs' in which the ability to interact with the world gets more and more complex provides a novel evolutionary structure that carries the story forward. Well written in a very readable and engaging style. Highly recommended." -- A. David Redish, University of Minnesota, author of The Mind within the Brain and Changing How We Choose: The New Science of Morality
About the Author
MAX BENNETT is an entrepreneur and researcher. He has cofounded multiple AI companies, holds several patents for AI technologies, and has published numerous scientific papers on the topics of evolutionary neuroscience and intelligence. He has been featured on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list as well as the Built In NYC's 30 Tech Leaders Under 30. Most notably, Bennett was the cofounder and Chief Product Offi-cer of Bluecore, one of the fastest growing companies in the U.S., providing AI technologies to some of the largest companies in the world. Bluecore has been featured in the annual Inc. 500 fastest growing com-panies, as well as Glassdoor's 50 best places to work in the U.S. Bluecore was recently valued at over $1 bil-lion. Bennett graduated from Washington University in St. Louis, summa cum laude, with a degree in economics and mathematics.
Product details
Publisher : Mariner Books (24 October 2023)
Language : English
Hardcover : 432 pages
ISBN-10 : 0063286343
ISBN-13 : 978-0063286344
Dimensions : 15.24 x 3.38 x 22.86 cm
Best Sellers Rank: 115,189 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)63 in STEM Education
79 in Education Research (Books)
90 in Historical Essays (Books)
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4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars (557)
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Xiaowen Hu
5.0 out of 5 stars The best book I ever readReviewed in Australia on 9 June 2024
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The author did a fantastic job to explain complex ideas in an easy way. The arguments are logical and very easy to follow. I can’t wait to re-read it as the ideas presented in the book is so eye opening and interesting.
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Jochen Herzhoff
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant book on what intelligence is and how it evolvedReviewed in Germany on 2 April 2025
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This is an amazing book, clear recommendation! It brilliantly intertwines the evolution of brain / biological intelligence with development / future of AI. It is very well structured, comprehensively explaining five major breakthroughs in the evolution of biological intelligence and their “counterparts” in AI. The topics are presented not overly simplified but thoroughly; nevertheless, it is a fun to read – also thanks to many good illustrations.
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Pierfrancesco Di Giuseppe
5.0 out of 5 stars History of mind developmentReviewed in Italy on 24 January 2025
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Fantastic book a must read to understand where we come from and how AI could impact
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Kate
5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended!Reviewed in Canada on 9 March 2025
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This book covers the evolution of human intelligence by describing 5 crucial breakthroughs, and how each built on the earlier ones. It’s a fascinating approach and I found it really enlightening. For example, in the 5th breakthrough, how human language acquisition and use distinguishes us from our close primate relatives.
The scope of the book is huge – very impressive that it took only a year to write.
Two points to mention:
The concept of ‘intelligence’ isn’t defined anywhere in the book that I could find. I think it should be, given that it’s the basis of the book. We all know what it means, sort of, but different people would probably explain it differently. Similarly, an entry in the Glossary for 'eukaryote' could be helpful.
The mixing of systems of units looks awkward – for example in Figure 1.4, microns together with inches. I think it would be better to stick with metric to be consistent with scientific writing (and use in many parts of the world).
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Toney
5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent bookReviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 March 2025
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One of the best books I have read; notes, glossary, references and Bibliography are provided at the end which are vey useful
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Prasad
5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting bookReviewed in India on 25 March 2025
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Very nice book. Talks about development of intelligence in living beings.
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Stetson
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January 7, 2025
A Brief History of Intelligence is another "big history" book. Instead of following human history (Sapiens), Western socioeconomic success (Guns, Germs, and Steel, Why Nations Fail, The WEIRDest People in the World), political history (The End of History) or genetic history (Who We Are and How We Got Here), we are treated to the evolution of the intelligence via the human brain. And although this book has several competitors in this space, it benefits from its comprehensive scope and framing.
Max Bennett, an entrepreneur in artificial intelligence, divides his book into two parallel tracks. 1) Describe the five major breakthroughs in the evolution of human intelligences and 2) compare those breakthroughs with the current state of knowledge and history of artificial intelligence. I imagine part of the exigence of this book was for Bennett to collect and organize knowledge on human intelligence in order to leverage this knowledge to advance his work in the field of AI. Because of this, the earlier portions of the narrative are more robust. Some of this is also owed to the fact that current AI techniques don't recapitulate the higher functions of the human brain but rely on more primitive approaches. Plus, I imagine he has kept some of his more tantalizing ideas out of the book.
Bennett's prose lacks the verve and panache of many of the other sweeping works that his competes in scale with, but this isn't particularly surprising given his youth. This is also a debut work. Nonetheless, Bennett delivers an eminently digestible narrative that tightly organized. He tames what in reality is an unwieldy subject, and he does so without any glibness or embarrassing oversimplifications. Bennett's strength as a writer appears to be organization and distillation. He drills down to essential insights on the evolutionary neurobiology, draws out the AI takeaways and comparisons, recaps and then moves on. It's shoe-leather science communication. For those interested in the capacity of the brain and the origins of intelligence, Bennett has saved readers a great deal of time by assembling this book.
When it comes to the five evolutionary breakthroughs, Bennett's insights are not mind-bogglingly clever or original. Every hard-working undergraduate in evolutionary biology will have come to some of the same conclusions over their coursework and reading. However, I don't want to sell Bennett short. His framing is cleverly clear and in the context of developments in AI, very topical.
So what are these breakthroughs in neurobiology and how did intelligence result? First, the very ancient common ancestors of human, bilaterians, needed a way to navigate the environment. Thus, a nervous system capable of steering emerged. Second, these early organisms had to figure out where they could obtain resources and how they could avoid predation. So another adaption emerged, reinforcement learning. The nervous system encoded valence into stimuli from the environment (food = good, predatory = bad, etc). As the evolutionary arms war between predator and prey heated up over time, the brains of ancestral species developed a way of simulating events: If I turn this way, I might find food but if I turn the other way, I may find danger. This sort of thing. At this level, primitive brains were beginning to model the world around in order to learn from it. Once modeling the world took off, brains started to model themselves. The striking thing is there is good evidence for this recursive process occurring well before humans. Bennet likes to repeat that human brains are simply scaled up chimp brains. And then the final breakthrough and probably the most obvious one is language. The ability to symbolically label and standardize inter-individual exchange with grammar enabled the accumulation and distribution of knowledge (culture). There are still a lot of questions that both Bennett and science have left unanswered, but this broad framework is sense-making in productive ways. I think a lot of reader can benefit from the book. Even myself, as someone with graduate-level training in neuroscience, genetics and the like still found a lot of the work interesting and compelling.
The later portions of the book were less robust, and it would have behooved the work to be a bit more rigorous with citations and endnotes. It would have also helped to have a more precise definition of intelligence to return to as the narrative progressed. But overall, I'm happy to recommend this one to anyone interested in the evolution of the brain and its relationship to advancements in artificial intelligence.
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Jason Furman
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January 21, 2025
An extraordinary combination of explication, synthesis, connecting and extension creates a form of originality deeply grounded in neuroscience, psychology, animal behavior, human evolutionary biology, computer science and more. Among the best books I have read in many years. I confess I was initially reluctant to read it, worried that a book on non-scientific topics by a non-scientist would contain too much ungrounded speculation and big thinking. I was wrong--instead, it is like great science writing that explains but also achieves much more (and as an aside, all the figures and diagrams and text tables were incredibly helpful).
Max Solomon Bennett explains the history of human intelligence through five "breakthroughs," each based on a common ancestor of animals that share that trait today (though in some cases evolution occurred simultaneously).
1. Steering and the first bilaterians. The first animals with a brain shared the same basic bilateral body plan: one end for food intake/sensing/brain, the other for excretion. They all needed to steer. Neurons provided inputs about food or danger, but a brain organized that input into a single decision about direction and navigation. This was "associative learning," like Pavlov's dog, with affect including the valence of good and bad and varying intensity. Bennett links this form of learning to how original Roombas operated.
2. Reinforcing and the first vertebrates. A more complex challenge is recognizing patterns and responding to inputs not immediately preceding outputs. It requires more sophisticated learning. Bennett explores the benefits of curiosity (transcending the local maximums that would otherwise constrain reinforcement learning), building world models, generalizing patterns, and more. He discusses how AI has solved these challenges through reinforcement learning, temporal difference learning, backward propagation, and convoluted neural networks – while noting that the brain uses different, possibly more efficient methods.
3. Simulating and the first mammals. Mammals were small, arboreal or burrowing, nocturnal, and had first-mover advantage. This created substantial benefits to planning ahead through world simulations. They developed a neocortex, which Bennett compares to generative AI, examining examples like perception's peculiar properties (less seeing than building models that fill gaps), memories (also simulations, thus potentially faulty), etc. Mammals can flexibly choose between "habits" (System 1) or model-based simulations (System 2).
4. Mentalizing and the first primates. Perhaps more creative and speculative, this focuses on primates' ability to picture others' thoughts and feelings, building a theory of mind. This capacity is integral to their social lives, enabling both cooperation and Machiavellian scheming – allowing them to reap the benefits of group living while managing the structural challenges of multiple males coexisting.
5. Speaking and the first humans. Most human uniqueness reflects differences in degree rather than kind. Language is the exception. It led to humans' explosive takeoff and cultural learning rather than evolution. Language is more flexible and not genetic (like flight, which birds must learn), combining with our large heads, premature birth, and need for social collectivity in child-rearing. Bennett offers an interesting discussion of how language only benefits people if others use it, but group selection proves too weak in practice and kin selection insufficient, leading to mutual altruism enforced by gossip.
While the arguments occasionally seem too neat in how they fit together, suggesting some rough edges of reality might be smoothed over, the work is generally fantastic and reliable. The links between different types of learning in AI were fascinating, particularly how they mapped to different stages of human intelligence evolution – with stronger connections to the first three phases (Bilaterians, vertebrates, and mammals) than the last two (primates and humans). It combines an illuminating understanding of human intelligence – and its evolutionary selection – with our current co-evolution with AI. Could not recommend more highly.
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Katia N
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February 24, 2025
Max Bennett is not an academic. He is an outsider to neuroscience, evolutionary biology or psychology. This book is broadly about the evolution of a brain, its functionality and, more specifically, its mechanisms for intelligence. He is not a trained “expert” in these areas. He is an entrepreneur working in AI development. So one might be sceptical about his “expertise”. But one should not. I think this lack of “formal” training is actually beneficial as it allows him to have a fresh look on this evolving field without the preconceptions and academia’s tendency for intransigence. Obviously, in the process of working on a book, he has widely consulted a lot of the academics and other experts.
In his research of intelligence, his approach was to compare and synthesise across three broad areas: evolutionary biology, comparative psychology (of different species) and artificial intelligence. These areas amazingly “bootstrap” each other: the discovery in the field of AI occasionally might help to explain how a biological brain performs a related task. And vice versa: the architecture of the brain might direct the design of a new AI product.
First, what this book does not try to do: Max avoids definitions. There is no definition of intelligence in the book at all. This is a quite deliberate omission. I guess it helps to keep the book focused without getting bogged down into a philosophical debate. Initially i was not sure how one can write a successful book about intelligence avoiding its definition. But after having finished the book, i think it was a good idea to keep the competing criteria for this type of definition out of the scope. Famously Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart described his test for obscenity in 1964, "I know it when I see it.". It works well with “intelligence” for the purpose of this book. Another controversial topic of consciousness and its evolvement is also not defined and practically avoided.
However for my purpose, it might be helpful to give some definition of intelligence as far as I understood it in the context of the book. Intelligence is an ability of a system (biological or artificial) either to assess trade offs and choose between them; or to learn independently by itself (self-learning) or from others; or often - both of these features. Max has developed a framework of five stages (“breakthroughs”) to show how this ability has emerged through the process of evolution. I found the framework very elegant and possessing a significant explanatory power.
But before i get to these breakthroughs, i want to mention that the book is brimming with curious factoids and interesting insights. It is the one of those long histories that are always a bit speculative and partly based on emergent ideas in natural and social sciences. Majority of such histories focus on prehistory of the humans and their societies. Those could be very speculative and often are driven by the author’s preconditioned set of ideas. Fortunately, Max is more interested what happened with intelligence well before humans, practically from the inception of life. So the book has mainly avoided sociological debates and controversies pertinent to such literature.
Before his first main protagonists about to appear, he takes time setting the scene. In the process, he tells the stories of at least two major ecological catastrophes, describes the features of neurones and initial single cell organisms. He also pays attention to the emergence of the eternal struggle: the tragically ruthless but logical war of species that has forever ended “the world of utopian peace”. Initially all existing bacteria were feeding themselves through photosynthesis. However one day fungi and breathing bacteria have appeared. This “respiratory life could survive only by stealing the energetic prize—the sugary innards—of photosynthetic life”. This has started an arms race of the predator/pray evolution, “a perpetual feedback loop: offensive innovations led to defensive innovations that required further offensive innovations”. And look: after millions years it does not get better. We are still at it, though now armed with all this accumulated sophisticated “intelligence”.
But let’s come back to the framework. From around 600 millions years in the past to our times, Max loosely maps the emergence of the brain and its individual structures to the key intelligent capabilities developed by the species’ lineage leading to the humans. His breakthroughs are as follows:
1. Steering (circa 600 millions years ago) - the first nucleus of a brain provides a creature with the ability to move straight and turn towards “good” things/ away from “bad” things.
2. Reinforcing (circa 550 millions years ago) - the brain has developed six key substructures. The main of them: basal ganglia and cortex. With their help a creature is able to learn through trial and error by rewarding itself on a right move and punishing for a bad one; the creature is able to recognise the patterns around.
3. Simulating (200 millions years ago) - neocortex appears that allows a mammal to pause the current recognition for a second and simulate “possible futures” only in their heads before making a decision which possible scenario to chose and how to act on it. In Max’s words it allows the brain to “to render a simulation that is not a current one.” That is roughly what we call “imagination” or “an episodic memory” (if the simulation is related to past as opposed to future). In machine speak, the brain is using its generative model to propagate the data top-down. In human speak, the brain produce an imagined irreducible 3d scene that the animal (human included) uses to make decisions and act on the real world.
4. Mentalizing (50 millions years ago) The primates are able to make a model of the other’s mental state. Respectively they are able to learn by imitation, to play politics, to cheat and maybe to “empathise”? Though Max does not get into this.
5. Speaking (noone knows exactly when but 50,000 years ago is probably a good estimation). This is the easiest to understand but the hardest to pin down one.
The last two “breakthroughs” are not directly related to any new physical brain structures and their far reaching “intellectual consequences” are quit difficult to define and easy to speculate about. What follows is focused on the first two “breakthroughs”. This is mainly due to my personal fascination with them. On the top of it, GR does not give me enough space in the box even to discuss the two of them. The book pays equal attention to all five of them. It also contains a short conclusion chapter on future in Max’s view. So if you find yourself intrigued, I would strongly recommend this book. But here I would stick to fish and nematodes, my new heroes.
Steering. Breakthrough #1.
I’ve simply fallen in love with the first protagonists of this drama: the bilaterians, the ancestors of nematodes, a variety of worms. Who would guess that nematodes would be so much like humans! The first creatures of this kind have evolved around 600 millions years ago. Their nervous system including a nucleus of a brain contained only 302 neurones (as opposed to 86 billion neurones that form 100 trillion connections to each other in the human brain). On a surface they could do only one practical thing: move straight or turn towards food and turn away from a danger. And yet it is amazing how many features these humble creatures have possessed already we might recognise in ourselves. At a closer look, they’ve appeared to be the dopamine-induced pleasure seekers, occasionally depression-prone but generally eager to learn. Sounds familiar? And all due to just those 302 little neurones. But let’s try to see how it works.
To be able to steer efficiently one should have a symmetrical body. The bilaterians are named after this feature. But something should give a nematode a “motivation”when to go forward and when to turn. For this even a nematode should possess a sort of primitive system of values: he needs to be able to feel what is “good” and what “bad” for him. This is of course not a moral system that the humans have developed and struggled to maintain. Though sometimes I think that in spite of our joint efforts occasionally we are not that far from nematodes in certain judgement or its lack.
Respectively feeling something “good” (a morsel of food or better temperature), a nematode would steer towards it and he would turn away if he feels something bad like a predator. It is probably not surprising that good/bad is totally subjective in relation to him and his needs. The goodness (and badness) is wired in his valence neurones. All the creatures evolved later possess these type of neurones as well even if the mechanism of their use has become much more complex*.
So how does it work in practice? Through his sensory neurones (predominantly smell) a nematode feels the proximity of food. Valence neurones tell him it is good news. They are directly connected to his motor neurones that move him in the direction of the food smell. But in many situations the creature needs to choose between the conflicting choices. For example a predator smell and a food smell from the same direction. Here the benefit of the integrated brain comes to help. Valence neuron’s signals are computed for “goodness” and “badness”. The one side wins. That would inhibit another side. So here we are: a nematode has made his first decision.
What makes nematodes even more “human” is his ability to toggle between the affective states. An affective state is something akin to what we call an emotional state. But we are not allowed to use this word not to create a precedent of mixing a very complex, “culture constructed” and society’s related” phenomena with the urges of a nematode. Though to what extent our emotional life is socially “constructed” and different from a nematode is open for debate.
Each of these affective states are broadly characterised by the two parameters: 1) valence; 2) a degree of arousal. Does it feel good or bad? And how strong this feeling is. Depending of these two parameters and their combinations there are four affective states. Apart from valence neurones mentioned before, they are regulated by another set of neurones which produce neuromodulators. These are the chemicals that when released affect a wider area, last longer than a neurone’s electrical spike and makes different group of neurones more sensitive than usual while potentially inhibiting other connections.
What neuromodulators affectively do is allowing an animal to persist in a certain state for longer, to keep it focused on the task so to speak. Without these chemicals any random fluke in the environment might rapidly change an animal’s motivation. So the nematode would jump from one task to another never achieving any physiological goals (ie eating, resting or running away successfully). It is appeared that we are well familiar with these substances:
“ dopamine is released by nearby rewards and triggers the affective state of arousal and pursuit (exploitation); and serotonin is released by the consumption of rewards and triggers a state of low arousal, inhibiting the pursuit of rewards (satiation)... class of neuromodulators: norepinephrine, octopamine, and epinephrine (also called adrenaline) are released by negative-valanced stimuli and trigger the well-known fight-or-flight response: increasing heart rate, constricting blood vessels, dilating pupils and suppressing various luxury activities, such as sleep, reproduction, and digestion.”
This last state caused by a threat and releasing adrenaline we would call “a stress”. “Fight and flight” response for a nematode would be trying to physically turn away from a threat or towards the food (if starving) and run.
The last of the four nematode’s affective states is “rest and relief” driven by opioids:
“When the stressor goes away and adrenaline levels drop, nematodes do not go back to their baseline state. Instead, the leftover anti-stress chemicals initiate a suite of recovery-related processes—immune responses, appetite, and digestion are turned back on. These relief-and-recover chemicals like opioids do this in part by enhancing serotonin and dopamine signals (both of which are inhibited by acute stressors). Opioids also inhibit negative-valence neurons, which helps an animal recover and rest despite any injuries. This, of course, is why opioids are such potent painkillers across all bilaterians. Opioids also keep certain luxury functions, such as reproductive activities, turned off until the relief-and-recover process is done; this is why opioids decrease sex drive. It is no surprise, then, that nematodes, other invertebrates, and humans all have similar responses to opioids—prolonged bouts of feeding, inhibited pain responses, and inhibited reproductive behaviour.
Opioids make everything better; they increase liking reactions and decrease disliking reactions; increasing pleasure and inhibiting pain.”
Humans seem to be reacting to opioids quite like nematodes. Fortunately for the latter they did not have to tackle with some dishonest greedy players in the pharmaceutical industry causing the massive opioid epidemic. Less fortunately for nematodes they still have to deal with many consequences of human decisions in their environment.
What i found the most poignant and apt was that: “After just two minutes of no relief from this inescapable stressor, nematodes do something surprising: they give up.”. They just stop trying to escape, to fight, anything in order to actively protect themselves. They just lie there. Max comments:
“chronic stress differs from acute stress in at least one important way: it turns off arousal and motivation...This is, perhaps, the most primitive form of depression.”
It is appeared that depression is almost 600 millions years older than the first human. Also the tendency to “give up” under the prolonged stress seems to be almost a body response. At least in nematode’s case. This fact is pregnant with meaning in application to human suffering, especially the one associated with a severe coercion inflicted by other humans: slavery, Holocaust, violent exploitation and numerous bloody conflicts through the centuries and the present. “Why they didn’t resist more?” - the question is often posed referring to some of the biggest mass atrocities. It looks like the nematodes may have provided us with the one of the clues for the answer.
Another amazing feature that the bilaterians can learn through associations albeit almost immediate ones in terms of time. If they regularly face a cue within maximum two seconds of a reward, they start to associate the cue with the reward (like infamous Pavlov’s dogs). This is the famous “what fire together wire together” when a connection is established between the two neurones consequently fired by the sequence of events. For example, if a smelly liquid is poured within a second of a morsel of food, after a few gos the animal start moving towards the liquid’s smell before the smell of the food appears.
Now i hope i’ve convinced you that nematodes are the most awesome creatures, almost like people. Well maybe not quite as they lack imagination for truly great things as well as proper cruel things. In fact, they do not seem to have an imagination full stop. This resurfaced later in further breakthroughs. And in terms of cruelty, according to Max, it has emerged only with language and only in humans. But now it is time to move on.
Reinforcing learning. Breakthrough #2.
50 millions years past by as a day and the vertebrates evolved. The majority of them initially were fish. If the bilaterians have just had a nucleus of neurones as a brain, these new guys have developed quite a lot of new structures within this powerful organ. Except for the cortex which is different in the mammals, the brains of fish are very similar to ours. Among other things their brain contain a structure called basal ganglia which is crucial for this breakthrough.
Apparently a fish (and everyone after her in our evolutionary lineage) can learn very effectively through trial and error. More specifically:
“The second breakthrough was reinforcement learning: the ability to learn arbitrary sequences of actions through trial and error.”
What it means in practice you might be able to find out from the first comment to this review as it did not fit into the box. Even better alternative is the book itself of course.
The main output of this breakthrough is that the vertebrates are able to learn through trial and error, recognise patterns and even have a simple spacial map in their brain. And the input from the AI science has helped the neuroscientists to understand the mechanism of these skills.
With pattern recognitions through inference, ability to be induced to act by dopamine and “memorise” some of the results, it is not that far from language, schools, states and wars. I am joking of course. But we’ve got to a good start. The following three “breakthroughs” are also very revealing and complex, but easy to understand due to the clarity and details of Max’s writing.
This is just a framework of course and might be a bit too “neat” : everything logically set out and well explained without particular contradictions or gaps that might have been there if a different optics applied. I am not sure how useful this framework would be for anyone closely involved in this research field. I guess some other author would be able to construct a different story from the same facts. I am not qualified to judge how complete the factual base of the book is and whether there are some studies contradicting the findings summarised in the book. Also this field is rapidly emerging. But as a curious general reader, I loved the overview presented and the story set out in the book, found it convincing, well sourced with evidence and also enjoyable.
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* I guess this might be compared to pleasure/pain dichotomy. Though it is unclear whether the nematodes actually able feel those. This might bring us to the debate whether this creatures possess consciousness. I believe they do; and they feel pain and pleasure, but i agree with Max’s strategy to avoid this debate for the sake of intelligence.
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Tiago
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December 8, 2024
How would you figure out how to make intelligent machines? The historical precedent for building intelligence sounds like a good start. What if that precedent is a disordered mess of papers and insights across several fields and decades that may require a couple of textbooks to start to understand? In that case, you organize the mess into a neat evolutionary story, filling gaps with proposed hypotheses along the way. Max Bennet did a fantastic job tidying up his story.
Bennett's book is a delightful tour of the evolution of intelligence through the specific path from the first animals to homo sapiens. Other forms of animal intelligence are mentioned but not covered in the book. The framework depends on identifying 5 breakthroughs in the evolutionary history of human intelligence, and pondering which one will be the 6th. Any excuses for metacognition are welcome, but this book is a particularly fun one.
More than fun, it's an impressive endeavor. As far as I know, there's no similarly accessible synthesis on intelligence out there. It successfully integrates work in reinforcement learning, linguistics, biology, and neuroscience. The proposed 5-breakthrough path is the result of a lot of reading and deep familiarity with the research discussed.
This book is likely my favorite of 2024. It doesn't feel as outdated as it could be given the pace of robotics advances this year and accounts for the capabilities LLMs had as of July 2023. I hope Bennett decides to publish more books, for this is a great start.
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Joy D
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February 18, 2025
This is a book of evolutionary neuroscience, starting with the primordial soup and proceeding through time to the modern human brain. The author focuses on the five big breakthroughs in the development of human intelligence and correlates them to what is currently happening in the development of artificial intelligence. The five breakthroughs include: directional movement, learning through positive and negative reinforcement, imagining various outcomes before selecting a course of action, social learning (including mimicking and anticipating future needs), and the development of communication through language.
The author outlines these breakthroughs in an accessible manner. The book is well organized and logically explained. It requires the reader’s keen interest in neuroscience. It is not a book to pick up on a whim. Even though the title mentions “a brief history,” be prepared to go into detail about each breakthrough. I particularly enjoyed the explanations of how artificial intelligence currently performs in each of the five areas. Perhaps I should not be surprised at how much behavioral psychology is included, and I was familiar with many of the experiments mentioned. If you are interested in a journey through the evolution of the human brain, this book will fill the bill. It will be interesting to see how closely AI will be able to mimic the real thing. So far, it is not even close.
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Nelson Zagalo
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February 9, 2025
‘A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains’ (2023) by Max Bennett is a work that takes us on a fascinating journey through the evolution of human intelligence, exploring how biological advances have shaped our cognitive capacity and how this vision has come to inform the development of artificial intelligence (AI). Bennett identifies five crucial transformations in the evolution of the biological brain that would support advances in human intelligence, each building on the previous one to culminate in the form of intelligence that characterises human beings today.
Loved it.
For the complete review in Portuguese, with excerpts, check my blog: https://narrativax.blogspot.com/2025/...
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Emil O. W. Kirkegaard
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December 29, 2024
It's about intelligence but not from the human intelligence research perspective. Rather it's a history of how intelligence evolved on earth and how mimicking it led to AI.
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Ron Jenkins
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July 7, 2024
This book is an excellent read if you want to know the current state of AI and human brain comparisons. It is not much for forecasting the future, which is why only four stars.
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aPriL does feral sometimes
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October 18, 2024
‘A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains’ by Max Bennett is a wonderful science book about the evolution of the brain, and what is currently known about how it functions. It is simply the best book on the brain I’ve ever read!
I have copied the book blurb:
”“I found this book amazing. I read it through quickly because it was so interesting, then turned around and read much of it again.”—Daniel Kahneman, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics and bestselling author of Thinking Fast & Slow
“I've been recommending A Brief History of Intelligence to everyone I know. A truly novel, beautifully crafted thesis on what intelligence is and how it has developed since the dawn of life itself."—Angela Duckworth, bestselling author of Grit
Equal parts Sapiens, Behave, and Superintelligence, but wholly original in scope, A Brief History of Intelligence offers a paradigm shift for how we understand neuroscience and AI. Artificial intelligence entrepreneur Max Bennett chronicles the five “breakthroughs” in the evolution of human intelligence and reveals what brains of the past can tell us about the AI of tomorrow.
In the last decade, capabilities of artificial intelligence that had long been the realm of science fiction have, for the first time, become our reality. AI is now able to produce original art, identify tumors in pictures, and even steer our cars. And yet, large gaps remain in what modern AI systems can achieve—indeed, human brains still easily perform intellectual feats that we can’t replicate in AI systems. How is it possible that AI can beat a grandmaster at chess but can’t effectively load a dishwasher? As AI entrepreneur Max Bennett compellingly argues, finding the answer requires diving into the billion-year history of how the human brain evolved; a history filled with countless half-starts, calamities, and clever innovations. Not only do our brains have a story to tell—the future of AI may depend on it.
Now, in A Brief History of Intelligence, Bennett bridges the gap between neuroscience and AI to tell the brain’s evolutionary story, revealing how understanding that story can help shape the next generation of AI breakthroughs. Deploying a fresh perspective and working with the support of many top minds in neuroscience, Bennett consolidates this immense history into an approachable new framework, identifying the “Five Breakthroughs” that mark the brain’s most important evolutionary leaps forward. Each breakthrough brings new insight into the biggest mysteries of human intelligence. Containing fascinating corollaries to developments in AI, A Brief History of Intelligence shows where current AI systems have matched or surpassed our brains, as well as where AI systems still fall short. Simply put, until AI systems successfully replicate each part of our brain’s long journey, AI systems will fail to exhibit human-like intelligence.
Endorsed and lauded by many of the top neuroscientists in the field today, Bennett’s work synthesizes the most relevant scientific knowledge and cutting-edge research into an easy-to-understand and riveting evolutionary story. With sweeping scope and stunning insights, A Brief History of Intelligence proves that understanding the arc of our brain’s history can unlock the tools for successfully navigating our technological future.”
There is a lot of information and artwork in this factually dense, but very readable, science book. I learned more about the brain and its evolution then I have done in reading any other book about this area of science. If your time is limited in reading about the recent discoveries and science about the brain, this is the one book I recommend to get. It pulls together all of the bits of information I have read here and there in other science and AI books. He explains with an in-depth synthesis for the general reader. The author focuses primarily on evolution and function of the brain, less on how computer scientists are transferring the skills of the brain to AI algorithms on the computer. For that angle, I recommend The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values by Brian Christian.
Included are a Glossary, extensive Notes, Bibliography and Index sections, plus Art, Photo, and Figure credits in the back of the book.
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A. Menon
5.0 out of 5 stars Eye opening work on the brain, its hierarchy of reinforcement learning and emergent intelligence
Reviewed in the United States on 24 June 2024
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This is the best book I have read in a long time. I wasn't quite sure what to expect but this exceeded all expectations and for me is in the must read category for the interested reader but in particular for those curious about AI, neuroscience and any part the spectrum between those fields. The work is ultimately an aggregation of results from neuroscience and computer science in a synthesis attempting to frame how brain functioning has evolved, how those cognitive functions developed led to a variety of physical manifestations allowing for our theory of mind and language and how these were not inevitable. This is not a work of neuroscience but is woven into break throughs in computer science and machine learning in particular. I know of no other book like this but wish there were more, it is an impressive overview of remarkable fields and interweaves their results with mastery.
We live in remarkable times for technology but often forget how much more remarkable the brain is and not strictly for homo sapiens. The author starts at the beginning of life and describes how mobility became a competitive advantage and how such physical mechanisms provided the basis for early adaptive learning benefits for early multi-cellular objects and were fundamentally distinct from multicellular objects stuck in place like corals. From simple bipedal movement the author incrementally moves on to a story of evolution and the strategies employed to drive evolution forward. The earlier parts of the book are mainly about how simple neuron patterns formed that created positive and dampening feedback loops to stimuli and many famous early experiments are detailed that were critical for neuroscience to make progress on the nervous system. The author moves on to evolutionary gains in the brain as adding more supervision to the instinctual networks formed in the basal ganglia and likened them to supervised learning with a teacher. The author gives the reader computer science history lessons with the breakthroughs made in machine learning techniques that coincidentally seem to match what mammalian brains do now through their layered hierarchy and how such techniques allowed for solving of very difficult problems when rewards can often have a long time to emerge from actions taking. This phenomenon of the credit assignment problem is discussed and the author provides the reader with an overview of how our minds have parts of the brain seemingly dedicated to solving this problem.
The author discusses how the large extinction event several hundred million years ago from what was almost certainly a large asteroid hitting the planet catalyzed the era of mammals and the evolution of the mammalian brain to which we all owe our current states of mind. The author describes how the neo-cortex evolved and some of the functions which provide a theory of mind that allowed for planning as well as tool building for multi-step optimization. The author interweaves the current state of machine learning and deep learning techniques highlighting similarities and differences. The current lack of internal representation of the world in language models is deemed to be a deficiency vs the way the brain works with its layers creating more complex models of the world (ie operating environment for the body). The human brain has uniquely created extensions of the neo-cortex associated with language and such a functionality has allowed for the effective hive mind of humanity where our knowledge scales with language lowering the friction on communicating what is in our heads. There are a number of neuroscience case studies weaved in about brain defects that impact a variety of cognitive abilities and such examples highlight the utility of certain functionalities but also that the mind has plasticity such that few parts of the brain are absolutely needed without substitution.
There is really too much information in this book to really summarize quickly but the picture the author gives is a highly illuminating perspective on the mind, how it has evolved, what have been the ingredients of its intelligence and how there have been layers of abstraction and hierarchical modeling that have gotten us to where we are. Almost as importantly the author runs a parallel track of machine learning advances, how many mimic evolutionary advances in the brain and how such current models have closed many gaps but still have much ground to cover to effectively have a model of the world in which the questions being asked of them are simulated rather than merely inferred from a trained dataset. There are no claims on where the boundaries are and this is not a book about the limits of technology nor its inevitable dominance. It is a remarkable overview of extremely complex and interwoven results that are making major strides that we are witnessing in real time. This really is a must read.
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Toney
5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 March 2025
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One of the best books I have read; notes, glossary, references and Bibliography are provided at the end which are vey useful
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Kate
5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended!
Reviewed in Canada on 9 March 2025
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This book covers the evolution of human intelligence by describing 5 crucial breakthroughs, and how each built on the earlier ones. It’s a fascinating approach and I found it really enlightening. For example, in the 5th breakthrough, how human language acquisition and use distinguishes us from our close primate relatives.
The scope of the book is huge – very impressive that it took only a year to write.
Two points to mention:
The concept of ‘intelligence’ isn’t defined anywhere in the book that I could find. I think it should be, given that it’s the basis of the book. We all know what it means, sort of, but different people would probably explain it differently. Similarly, an entry in the Glossary for 'eukaryote' could be helpful.
The mixing of systems of units looks awkward – for example in Figure 1.4, microns together with inches. I think it would be better to stick with metric to be consistent with scientific writing (and use in many parts of the world).
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Pierfrancesco Di Giuseppe
5.0 out of 5 stars History of mind development
Reviewed in Italy on 24 January 2025
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Fantastic book a must read to understand where we come from and how AI could impact
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rawmy
5.0 out of 5 stars amazing and easy to follow
Reviewed in Japan on 15 December 2024
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One of the best books on AI and how to approach it
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David Obon
5.0 out of 5 stars A very enjoyable book
Reviewed in Spain on 8 February 2025
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Complexity explained with clarity and brilliance.
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Prasad
5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting book
Reviewed in India on 25 March 2025
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Very nice book. Talks about development of intelligence in living beings.
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Johan Widen
5.0 out of 5 stars Den här boken är en guldgruva av viktigt vetande, om hjärnas evolution, och om oss människor
Reviewed in Sweden on 14 February 2024
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Boken är en pedagogisk sammanställning av dagens vetenskap om hjärnans utveckling, och även om hur människor fick språkförmåga.
Den är skriven populärvetenskapligt, för att vara tillgänglig för alla läsare, och kräver inga förkunskaper.
Jag tycker boken är lättläst och intressant, den är inget man vill lägga ifrån sig.
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