The Descent of Artificial Intelligence is an eye-opening take on the history of AI. This is a sophisticated piece of scholarship that shows us just how strongly AI innovation is connected to our scientific fascination with people. It is a must-read for all who want to look beyond the AI hype.--Mona Sloane, University of Virginia

Confronted with the complexity of human minds and human social forms, the philosophers, economists, sociologists, and engineers whose history Donnelly traces here responded by imagining, and convincing the rest of us to imagine, that things like 'minds' and 'intelligence' and 'society' were things that social science could easily understand and measure. This is a brilliantly researched and argued book, an absolute must-read for anyone interested in understanding not only where we are today but how we got here.--Eric Hayot, Director of the Center for Humanities and Information, Penn State University

The book is a valuable intervention in the rapidly expanding historical literature on the history of AI and also a useful and readable resource for students and scholars at all levels who want to know more about the historical roots of fraught contemporary discourses around intelligence, artificial or otherwise.-- "Choice"

there is much to be learned from this thorough and erudite book-- "Technology and Culture"

Provides valuable insight into epistemological debates central in establishing the study of human nature as a "science."-- "American Historical Review"

An extraordinary history of thinking about human-machine relations, spelling out the wide range of ways of conceptualizing the human, the machinic, and relations between them as they have appeared across time and across societies.-- "History of Media Studies"