Publisher: Diamond Inc.
In early 2015, Sota Furuya, a publishing agent and a friend of mine reached out to me about a project to publish a book about the history of IT/computer. It was something I was enthusiastic since my teenage, so I decide to accept the offer.
In the first meeting with the editor Yuto Ichikawa, we discussed the structure of the book, and we came up with the idea to have the novel part which Mari, a college student in 2030 to explore the actual history of AI. At the same period I watched the movie “Imitation Game” which is a biography of Alan Turing, the inventor of the concept of the computer today, but ended up killing himself by biting a poisoned apple. It gave me a strong impression and gave me an idea to tell the story of AI development using the metaphor of holy bible, as a story of humanity with sin to await the arrival of the final judgement and to return to the heaven.
I was obsessed with this idea, and structured the book in seven chapters.
- Light of the creation and the paradise lost: Invention of computer by Alan Turing and John con Neumann
- Noah’s ark: Invention of microprocessor, Moor’s law and the invention of personal computer as a media to augment human ability
- Tower of Babel: Evolution of Internet as a global platform over the cloud
- Tablet of commandments: Rise of the smartphone
- Nights of the holy grail: Deep learning and the search for Natural General Intelligence
- Millennial kingdom: A world with AI and the end of Modern age
- Final judgement: Will AI have it’s mind
The book was published in March 2016, the month when AlphaGo, DeepMind’s Go-playing AI defeated the human Champion. The book was well received helped by the timing, became the amazon.co.jp category best seller, No.1 in the science & technology category in Yaesu Book Center a flagship book store in Tokyo, won Rakuten Technology Award 2016 Ruby Prize, selected as one of the best in the science & technology category by Daikanyama Tsutaya Books.
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