'A terrific book - essential reading for everyone seeking to make sense of Artificial Intelligence.' Professor Sir Adrian Smith, Director and Chief Executive of the Alan Turing Institute

'Calm, informative and refreshingly free of hype, Wooldridge's effortlessly readable book is the perfect guide to the history and future of AI.' - Tom Chivers, author of 'The AI Does Not Hate You'

In this mythbusting guide to AI past and present, one of the world's leading researchers shows why our fears for the future are misplaced

The ultimate dream of artificial intelligence is to build machines that are like us: conscious and self-aware. While this remains a remote possibility, rapid progress on AI in this century is already profoundly changing our world. Yet the public debate and media hype is still largely centred on unlikely prospects from sentient machines to dystopian robot takeovers.

In this lively and clear-headed...