Artificial Intelligence has been a futurist dream for decades but today has finally come of age as the many barriers to its implementation have been overcome. This “new technology” has been at least 80 years in the making and suffered its fair share of disappointments as progress failed to match expectations.

Now at last, however, the elements are in place for it not only to match these expectations but, in due course, exceed them. Rapid advances in both hardware and software are producing ever better and more powerful solutions. At the same time it is clear that most people still have only a limited understanding of what AI really is and what it is capable of achieving.

In this authoritative new study, professional investor and market historian Dr Sandy Nairn draws on his 40 years of experience in financial markets to put the history and future of AI in context. It draws on and updates the research in Engines That Move Markets, his classic study of the financial and market impact of past technology-inspired revolutions, from the railways to the Internet.

In simple and unambiguous language, he explains why AI is set to become an agent of transformation equivalent, at least in magnitude, to the greatest leaps forward in technology we have so far seen in human history, which have brought us from an agrarian subsistence economy to today’s advanced industrial society.

The evidence from those previous technological leaps, the revolutions in power generation, communications and information, help us understand the magnitude of what we can expect in the future from AI as it continues its rapid development. Dr Nairn lays out the likely impact of these changes for investors over the next decade and warns that we need to think very carefully about the economic and social impacts if we are to maximise AI’s potential and minimise the negative side effects.

His new book, thoroughly researched and ambitious in its scope, seeks to provide professional and general readers with an expert account of how AI will change our lives, while also stimulating debate about the opportunities and dangers that this latest technological revolution will bring in its wake.