Google on the Brink: Turmoil and Triumph on the Road to Superintelligence
About this ebook
Then, within hours of ChatGPT’s 2022 launch, tech insiders were openly proclaiming the company’s death. Especially galling for Google employees was that they had invented the underlying technology and created their own chatbot far earlier, only for executives to waffle and quash it. Twenty years after Larry Page noted that “artificial intelligence would be the ultimate version of Google,” the company was caught completely off guard. Once synonymous with inventiveness, Google had become a sclerotic, self-serving bureaucracy and squandered its commanding lead in AI.
With unparalleled insider access within the company, Google on the Brink charts the full story of Google’s engagement with AI: recruiting top scientists such as Geoffrey Hinton, acquiring Demis Hassabis’ DeepMind and developing driverless Waymo cars. We see Page and co-founder Sergey Brin hand control to CEO Sundar Pichai, and tensions mount between old Google and new. As the company competes with Microsoft and OpenAI over the future of artificial intelligence and cozies up to President Trump and the military, it faces an internal battle for its soul. Ultimately, it would take Brin’s return— and the risk-taking and engineering brilliance of the early Google—to keep the company a contender in the race to superintelligence.
Discover more
About the author
David A. Vise is a Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling author of five books including The Google Story, the first major biography of the search giant. David spent 23 years as a reporter at The Washington Post and got started in journalism as a copy boy at The Tennessean in Nashville, where he was born and raised. David was named one of the 125 most influential graduates of The Wharton School and was founding Executive Director of Modern States Freshman Year for Free, the nation's largest free-college-for-credit program. A first-generation American, David has been married for 44 years to Lori Vise, an independent college consultant. They live in Bethesda, MD.
Mark Malseed is a journalist and the bestselling coauthor of The Google Story. Previously the researcher for Bob Woodward on two books about the presidency and national security, he has contributed to The Washington Post and South China Morning Post and been featured in Bloomberg TV and National Geographic Channel documentary series. The founder of several media and technology ventures, today Mark runs Seed Consulting and speaks internationally on information and influence. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia, with his wife and two sons.
