The Emergent Mind: How Intelligence Arises in People and Machines

A ＂deeply stimulating and disarmingly accessible＂ (Robert Sapolsky, author of Determined) journey into the inner workings of human and artificial minds

When we are trying to solve a problem, what happens? We find ourselves weighing arguments, or relying on intuition, then reaching a conscious decision about what to do. What is going on behind the scenes?

In The Emergent Mind, Gaurav Suri and Jay McClelland show that our experience is the tip of an iceberg of brain activity that can be captured in an artificial neural network. Such networks--initially developed as models of ourselves--have become the engines of artificial neural intelligence. Suri and McClelland aren’t reducing mankind to mere machines. Rather, they are showing how a data-driven neural network can create thoughts, emotions, and ideas--a mind--whether in humans or computers.

The Emergent Mind provides a fascinating account of how we reach decisions, why we change our minds, and how we are affected by context and experience. Ultimately, the book gives a new answer to one of our oldest questions: Not just how do minds work, but what does it mean to be a mind at all?

Gaurav Suri completed his B.S. and M.S. in mathematics from Stanford University. After a successful career in management consulting, he returned to Stanford, receiving a Ph. D. in Affective Science in 2015. He is the author of 40+ publications that have been cited several thousand
times. He is also a co-author of A Certain Ambiguity, A Mathematical Novel (Princeton University Press, 2007), which won the American Publisher’s Award and was translated into six languages. It continues to be used as a required text in various U.S. and international universities. James L. (Jay) McClelland is a Professor of Psychology and (by courtesy) of Computer Science and Linguistics at Stanford University. He is the Director of the Stanford Center for Mind, Brain, Computation and Technology and holds a part-time consulting research scientist position at DeepMind. His publications have been cited over one hundred thousand times. He was a co-founder with David E. Rumelhart of the Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP) research group, the team that produced the two-volume book Parallel Distributed Processing (MIT Press, 1986).