What does it mean to be smart? To be human? What do we really want from life and the intelligence we have or might create? Long dismissed as unattainable, artificial intelligence was, for decades, ignored by the big tech giants and universities. The small community of AI researchers worked on the fringes of the scientific community. Then, in 2008, two chance meetings changed everything. The first was between a university researcher and a Microsoft programmer. The second was at Google, where another academic convinced a Google exec to pay closer attention. Within months both realized the same thing: AI-real artificial intelligence-was far closer than they realized. The first company to achieve full AI would dominate the next several decades of tech. The race was on. Metz's epic story dramatically presents the fierce competition among national interests, shareholder value, the pursuit of scientific knowledge, and the very human concerns about privacy, security, bias, and prejudice.