In less than a century, computing has transformed our society and helped spur countless innovations. We now carry in our back pockets computers that we could only have dreamed of a few decades ago. Machine-learning systems can analyze scenes and drive vehicles. And we can craft extraordinarily accurate representations of the real world--models that can be used to design nuclear reactors, simulate myriad greenhouse-gas emission scenarios, and launch a probe on a nine-year trip to study Pluto in an all-too-brief high-speed fly-by. We fundamentally owe these capabilities to our ability to build progressively better computing devices--the transistors and other components at the heart of computer chips.

Sean Murray does not like talking to the press. He says this several times when we meet at the Guildford offices of Hello Games, the development studio he founded in 2008 with Grant Duncan, Ryan Doyle and David Ream. He is loquacious, but nervous. No one at the studio has spoken to any journalists for nearly two years, since the release of Murray's pet project No Man's Sky, an extraordinarily ambitious space exploration game that aimed to put an infinite universe on a games console – a game that, when it didn't meet some players' high expectations, triggered an appalling internet harassment campaign that left the small studio and its staff reeling. It is hard to blame him for his hesitance.

I have a confession to make. I feel like a fraud. Every few days, I receive an email from either a friend, a friend of a friend, or a random company that asks me for my insights in Artificial Intelligence. These include entrepreneurs who have just sold their startups, Stanford MBA graduates who reject half a million dollar offers, venture capitalists, even major bank executives. A couple of years earlier, I wouldn't even have the courage to approach those people, let alone dreaming about them wanting to talk to me.