Editorial Series

Modern AI History

An ongoing story of how we got to the AI moment we're living in. Captivating without the jargon, just the people, the bets, and the rivalries that built the field.

7-part series Nvidia DeepMind OpenAI Anthropic ChatGPT

Part 7: The day Prometheus gave us ChatGPT

Part 7: The day Prometheus gave us ChatGPT

Part 7 of an ongoing series on Modern AI History. The Fire in the Mountain What we've really been trying to emphasise in the story so far is that AI didn't drop out of the sky. It feels that way now — there was a Tuesday in

Part 6: Amodei, Anthropic & the Lesson of Paul Atreides

Part 6: Amodei, Anthropic & the Lesson of Paul Atreides

Part 6 of an ongoing series on Modern AI History. If you've read Frank Herbert's books or watched the first two of the excellent Villeneuve films, you'll be familiar with Dune's anti-hero, Paul Atreides. Through Atreides, Herbert tells a cautionary tale of

Part 5: Attention is all you need

Part 5: Attention is all you need

Part 5 of an ongoing series on Modern AI History. While OpenAI's heist was getting underway in Menlo Park, progress at everyone's favourite search engine never paused. The next big AI breakthrough would come from Google, exactly as you'd expect — just not from the

Part 4: Open's Eleven

Part 4: Open's Eleven

Part 4 of an ongoing series on Modern AI History. All great heist movies have an iconic dining scene. The most famous, Heat, has De Niro and Pacino making a gentleman's agreement to jostle to their ends. Our story ends similarly, perhaps a little less gentlemanly, but starts

Part 3: The Maverick Magicians Who Turned a Page

Part 3: The Maverick Magicians Who Turned a Page

Part 3 of an ongoing series on Modern AI History. We didn't plan it this way, but our next story is also about a trio. Maybe there's something in threes. A five-minute walk from the brick column at King's Cross station where Harry Potter

Part 2: The Godfather's 40 Year Bet

Part 2: The Godfather's 40 Year Bet

Part 2 of an ongoing series on Modern AI History. Let's skip along nineteen years, to 2012. Nvidia is no longer a long shot. They survived two near-death experiences in the 1990s, won the gaming wars of the 2000s, and now sit comfortably as the graphics chip of

Part 1: The Name on the Plaque at a Denny's Booth

Part 1: The Name on the Plaque at a Denny's Booth

A week or so back, as I fired up the treadmill, I was faced with the hollow feeling of having finished one of the all-time great treadmill shows, Lincoln Lawyer, and having to make a new commitment. Shoulders slumped, I ran the old "similar shows" search and my