The Math Inside the Machine Is Now Available

After months of writing, editing, and obsessing over diagrams, the book is finally here in paperback and Kindle formats.

I’m thrilled to announce that The Math Inside the Machine: How Intelligence Emerges from Eleven Simple Operations is now available in both paperback and Kindle editions.

What’s the book about?

If you’ve ever wondered how ChatGPT, Claude, or other AI systems actually work under the hood, this book is for you. I wrote it to answer a simple question: what’s really happening when these systems seem to think?

The answer, it turns out, involves just eleven mathematical operations. The same ones you learned between kindergarten and calculus. Addition. Multiplication. A few others. That’s it.

But the story of how humanity discovered these operations, and how they combine to produce something that looks like intelligence, is anything but simple. It involves a Napoleonic revelation in Egypt, a escape from the plague, a beachside think tank gaming nuclear apocalypse, and a dying genius with guards at his door.

Two ways to read

I designed the book for two kinds of readers:

  1. The equation followers — If you want to trace every operation, understand every diagram, and emerge ready to read the original research papers, you can do that.

  2. The story seekers — If math makes you nervous, you can let the historical narratives carry you. Each chapter is structured so you’ll know when it’s safe to skim the technical bits.

Either way, by the final chapter, you’ll trace a word through a transformer and see the system as engineers do. The black box becomes glass.

Get your copy

Thank you to everyone who encouraged me to write this. I hope it helps demystify these remarkable systems while preserving the wonder of what they can do.

More updates coming soon — including behind-the-scenes looks at the diagrams and early reactions from readers.