Writing this book was a case study in human generosity. It was only possible because of the remarkable kindness of many people who helped me bring it life. There are many people who deserve thanks.
First and foremost, my wife, Sydney, who edited many pages and helped me think through many conceptual snags. She woke up countless mornings to find me long gone because I had already snuck out to read and write; and she came home from work countless days to find me tucked away in my office. Thank you for supporting this endeavor despite how much mental space it consumed.
I want to thank my initial readers, who gave me feedback and encouragement: Jonathan Balcome, Jack Bennett, Kiki Freedman, Marcus Jecklin, Dana Najjar, Gideon Kowadlo, Fayez Mohamood, Shyamala Reddy, Billy Stein, Amber Tunnell, Michael Weiss, Max Wenneker, and, of course, my parents, Gary Bennett and Kathy Crost; and my stepmother, Alyssa Bennett.
In particular, I want to thank my father-in-law, Billy Stein, who has no intrinsic interest in AI or neuroscience, but nonetheless dutifully read and annotated every single page, questioned every concept and idea to make sure it made sense, and provided invaluable input and guidance on structure, understandability, and flow. Dana Najjar, Shyamala Reddy, and Amber Tunnell, who have far more writing experience than I, gave me essential input on early drafts. And Gideon Kowaldo, who gave me useful input on the AI history and concepts.
I am extremely grateful to the scientists who took time out of their busy lives to respond to my emails where I peppered them with innumerable questions. They helped me understand their research and think through many of the concepts in this book: Charles Abramson, Subutai Ahmed, Bernard Balleine, Kent Berridge, Culum Brown, Eric Brunet, Randy Bruno, Ken Cheng, Matthew Crosby, Francisco Clasca, Caroline DeLong, Karl Friston, Dileep George, Simona Ginsburg, Sten Grillner, Stephen Grossberg, Jeff Hawkins, Frank Hirth, Eva Jablonka, Kurt Kotrschal, Matthew Larkum, Malcolm MacIver, Ken-ichiro Nakajima, Thomas Parr, David Redish, Murray Sherman, James Smith, and Thomas Suddendorf. Without their willingness to respond to the questions of a complete stranger, it would have been impossible for someone like me to learn a new field.
I want to especially thank Karl Friston, Jeff Hawkins, and Subutai Ahmed, who read some of my early papers and generously took me under their wing and brought me into their labs to share my ideas and learn from them.
Joseph LeDoux, David Redish, and Eva Jablonka were astoundingly generous with their time. Not only did they read and annotate multiple drafts of the manuscript, but they provided essential feedback on concepts I had missed, areas of the literature I had failed to consider, and helped me expand on the framework and story. They became my de facto neuroscience editors and advisers. They deserve much of the credit for whatever aspects of this book are deemed valuable (and none of the blame for aspects deemed otherwise).
One of my favorite parts of this book is the art, and for this, Rebecca Gelernter and Mesa Schumacher deserve all the credit. They are the incredibly talented artists who produced the beautiful art herein.
As a first-time author, I am grateful to the people in the book industry who gave me guidance. Jane Friedman gave me tough and useful feedback. The writer Jonathan Balcome read one of the earliest drafts and gave feedback and encouragement. The writers Gerri Hirshey and Jamie Carr each helped me with my book proposal and gave me feedback on early chapters.
Lisa Sharkey at HarperCollins made this book real. I spoke to her before I decided to write it and asked her whether it was even worth attempting to write this book given I was a first-time author and not a formally trained neuroscientist. Despite the obvious fact that there was a good chance the book wouldn’t see the light of day, she encouraged me to pursue it regardless. I am deeply grateful for that conversation, and her advice and support. It is wonderfully fitting that she was the one, over a year after that conversation, who ended up deciding to publish this book.
I want to thank my agent, Jim Levine, who was willing to read the book from nothing but a single introduction (thanks to Jeff Hawkins). Jim read the entire book in one day, and took a bet on it the next day. I want to thank my U.S. editor, Matt Harper, and my U.K. editor, Myles Archibald, who also took a bet on this book, and helped me work through countless drafts and navigate the many ups and downs of writing. I want to thank my copyeditor, Tracy Roe, who methodically fixed my many typos and grammatical mishaps.
There are also folks who helped me in less direct but equally important ways. My guitar teacher, Stephane Wrembel, who I turned to for advice on numerous occasions. My friend Ally Sprague (who tends to double as my coach), who helped me make the decision to take a year off to write this book. My friends Dougie Gliecher and Ben Eisenberg, who connected me to people they knew in the book industry. My brothers, Adam Bennett and Jack Bennett, who bring joy and play to my life, and are always a source of inspiration. And my parents, Gary Bennett and Kathy Crost, who fostered in me a love of learning, showed me how to follow my curiosity, and taught me to finish things I start.
This book was only possible because of many other prior works whose ideas, stories, and writing shaped this book in fundamental ways. The Alignment Problem by Brian Christian. Behave by Robert Sapolsky. The Deep History of Ourselves by Joseph LeDoux. The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul by Eva Jablonka and Simona Ginsburg. How Monkeys See the World by Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth. The Mind within the Brain by David Redish. On Intelligence and A Thousand Brands by Jeff Hawkins. Why Only Us by Robert Berwish and Noam Chomsky.
There were also numerous textbooks that became essential resources for me. Brains Through Time by Georg Striedter and R. Glenn Northcutt. Brain Structure and Its Origins by Gerald Schneider. Deep Learning by Ian Goodfellow, Yoshua Bengio, and Aaron Courville. Evolutionary Neuroscience by Jon H. Kaas. The Evolution of Language by W. Tecumseh Fitch. Fish Cognition and Behavior by Culum Brown, Kevin Laland, and Jens Krause. Neuroeconomics by Paul Glimcher. The Neurobiology of the Prefrontal Cortex by Richard Passingham and Steven Wise. The New Executive Brain by Elkhonon Goldberg. Reinforcement Learning by Richard Sutton and Andrew Barto.
Lastly, I want to thank my dog, Charlie, whose begging for treats and playful nudges forced me to reenter the world of the living from numerous bleary-eyed sessions of reading papers and textbooks. As I write this paragraph, she is lying next to me fast asleep, twitching away in some dream, her neocortex surely rendering a simulation of something. Of what, of course, I will never know.