Brian Christian


Brian Christian is an American non-fiction author, poet, programmer and researcher, best known for the two bestselling books The Most Human Human and Algorithms to Live By.
Christian competed as a "confederate" in the 2009 Loebner Prize competition, attempting to seem "more human" than the humans taking the test, and succeeded. The book he wrote about the experience, The Most Human Human, became a Wall Street Journal best-seller, a New York Times editors' choice, and a New Yorker favorite book of the year. He was interviewed by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show on March 8, 2011.
In 2010, Christian collaborated with film director Michael Langan on a short film adaptation of Christian's poem "Heliotropes," which was published in the final issue of Wholphin magazine.
In 2016, Christian collaborated with cognitive scientist Tom Griffiths on the book Algorithms to Live By, which became the #1 bestselling nonfiction book on Audible and was named an Amazon best science book of the year and an MIT Technology Review best book of the year.
His awards and honors include publication in The Best American Science and Nature Writing and fellowships at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Yaddo, and MacDowell. Beginning in 2012, Christian has been a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2016 Christian was named a Laureate of the San Francisco Public Library.

Early life and education

Christian is a native of Little Silver, New Jersey. He attended high school at the prestigious High Technology High School in Lincroft, NJ.
Christian holds a degree from Brown University in computer science and philosophy, and an MFA in poetry from the University of Washington.

Influence

The Most Human Human was Elon Musk's "night-table reading" in 2014.
Reading The Most Human Human inspired the playwright Jordan Harrison to write the play Marjorie Prime. The play was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and was released as a feature film in 2017.
The Most Human Human also inspired filmmaker Tommy Pallotta's 2018 documentary More Human Than Human, in which Christian appears.

Books