Image: Flynn Shore / Penguin
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve inevitably witnessed the alarm surrounding artificial intelligence: from concerns about computers developing elevated consciousness, to ChatGPT churning out college essays and precocious creative writing pieces (no comment).
But amid all the noise, it can be hard to nail the fundamentals of understanding AI: what, exactly, is it? How will it shape our society and day-to-day lives? What about the ethics of it all? To help answer these questions and more, we’ve rounded up the best books about AI from tech experts and social scientists, plus a couple of novels that grapple with the implications of it all within imagined worlds of a (not-so-distant) future.
In a not-so-distant future where quantum computers, robot assistants and abundant energy influence the way we live, how do we ensure the flourishing of humankind and maintain control over these technologies? Co-founder of DeepMind and current CEO of Microsoft AI Mustafa Suleyman seeks to answer this question.
The next decade, he explains, will be defined by a wave of powerful, fast-proliferating new tech that will create immense prosperity – but also introduce new risks. As the ultimate insider to the AI revolution, Mustafa shows us a path forward in The Coming Wave .
Information networks have made and unmade our world. From
In Nexus , Yuval Noah Harari, the global bestselling author of Sapiens
In this examination of how the access (or lack of access) to information has shaped our existence, Harari identifies a hopeful middle ground and rediscovers our shared humanity.
As a seasoned computer science professor, Melanie Mitchell is well-placed to introduce newcomers to the technical and expansive world of artificial intelligence. Mitchell’s one-stop “Guide for Thinking Humans” is a robust and comprehensive overview spanning the origins of AI, how machines think and learn, ethical concerns – and even whether robots respond to rewards and incentives.
At once accessible and deeply informative, Artificial Intelligence lays the groundwork – and more – for your working knowledge of AI.
Labelled the ‘oracle of technological change’, Ray Kurzweil is one of the greatest inventors of our time. Dozens of his long-range predictions about rise of the internet, AI and bioengineering have come true.
Kurzweil’s next prediction? He calls it the Singularity: by 2045 he believes we will be able to connect our brains directly with AI, enhancing our intelligence and expanding our consciousness in ways we can barely imagine.
In this visionary and ultimately uplifting book, Kurzweil explains how he believes this will occur, and what it will mean to live life free from the limits of biology.
Consider this an official warning from a preeminent expert in computer science: artificial intelligence poses a danger to humanity as we know it. After years of studying the intricacies of AI, Stuart Russell has reached the conclusion that it could become a runaway existential threat to humans if we don’t make urgent and fundamental changes to the way it is currently being developed.
With candour and authority, Russell skewers the existing AI debate as we know it and imagines a more optimistic alternative in which AI’s powers can be harnessed to “provably beneficial” ends.
Part sci-fi, part data-led forecasting, AI 2041 is a masterful work of speculative fiction that imagines what the world defined by artificial intelligence will look like some two decades into the future.
A series of 10 short stories, penned by tech executive Kai-Fu Lee and author Chen Qiufan, imagines human experiences touched by AI, from laid-off workers in San Francisco to students of a virtual teacher in Seoul – each serving as a springboard for thoughtful commentary and analysis.
Do you think advancements in artificial intelligence usher in a brave new world, or a dystopian nightmare? Whatever your preconceived notions about AI, this book by computer science professor Michael Wooldridge will likely dispel them. The Road to Conscious Machines , which sets out to “tell the story of AI through failed ideas”, charts the history of humans’ aspirations to develop machines capable of autonomous thought, self-awareness and creativity.
By no means a silver bullet, Wooldridge argues current progress in AI – from self-driving cars to language translation – is exciting yet has a long way to go before it fulfils the stuff of sci-fi dreams.
The panic about machines imminently coming for our jobs is a well-worn one that precedes the 21st (and even 20th) Century but, thanks to AI, this time really is different, argues economist Daniel Susskind. Everyday – and complex – tasks in today’s professions, whether it’s drafting legal contracts or diagnosing eye diseases, could soon become the commonplace preserve of advanced computers capable of displacing an untold number of jobs.
Marrying the history of labour economics with the history of AI, Susskind establishes a compelling case for what automation and machine learning could spell for the world of work, and the significant challenges, such as wealth distribution and big-tech regulation, that lie ahead.
British scientist James Lovelock was a pioneer of the environmental movement thanks to his Gaia hypothesis, in which he postulated that Earth, in all its complexity, has intelligent, self-regulating capabilities and is fighting back against human destruction.
In Novacene , his last book, published at the age of 100, he argues that the age of the Anthropocene, the geological epoch defined by the impact of human activity, is over. In its place, the era he has coined as the “novacene”: humans are now in the company of artificial intelligence that could birth new beings also capable of comprehending the cosmos around them. But humans and super-intelligent machines alike will still rely on Gaia to keep the planet cool and sustain life.
A prolific writer primarily known for her novels, Jeanette Winterson brings a unique lens to the conversation surrounding AI with her essay collection 12 Bytes. Each of the book’s 12 chapters form a compelling and entertaining sideways swipe at our understanding of tech and its impact, drawing from history, while also reimagining the concept of matter, sexual politics, and how much the computerised future will continue to echo the socially regressive tendencies of the past.
And if you love Winterson’s irreverent voice in 12 Bytes, be sure to check out her latest novel Frankissstein Mary Shelley ’s iconic gothic tale .
The ever-evolving capabilities of AI are often benchmarked against those of humans, but what about other forms of life? With Ways of Being , artist and author James Bridle explores the complex organisms and systems that represent a different kind of intelligence. From the intricate networks of fungi connecting forests, to the adaptability of Planet Earth, and even the decentralised nervous systems of octopuses (which, incidentally, make them great escape artists), Bridle’s deft storytelling skills and originality effortlessly bridge the seeming gulf between nature and technology.
Life, according to MIT professor Max Tegmark, can progress through three stages: the biological, the cultural, and the technological – and, as the title of this book suggests, we are currently in the latter. But far from a progressive utopia, an era defined by superhuman intelligence poses critical questions about the role humans play within it: from income and prosperity, to whether machines will enhance humanity or wipe it out entirely.
Leaving no stone unturned and no difficult question unanswered, it’s easy to see how Tegmark’s 2018 title became a bestseller that counts Barack Obama as a fan.
Mathematician Cathy O'Neil’s bestselling first book is not about AI per se , but (in addition to having an excellent pun for a title), makes this list on account of its informative and thoughtful breakdown of the disturbing ways in which big data and algorithms are creeping into every aspect of our lives.
Dangerously lacking in transparency and unfettered by regulation, the mathematical models that shape our present and future are stoking inequality and threatening the very fabric of democracy, she argues. Weapons of Math Destruction is a must-read for any tech enthusiast, as it wrangles with not only the ethical dilemmas and hypotheticals posed by big tech, but approaches the issue through a discerning and necessary sociological lens.
It may seem counterintuitive to read a 2019 novel set in 1980s London if you want to understand the current hot-button issue of artificial intelligence, but Ian McEwan’s anachronistic science fiction, which imagines a hi-tech world in which World War II computer science genius Alan Turing is still alive, grapples with some of the biggest existential questions we have, as sentient machines become more sophisticated.
Protagonist Charlie spends a chunk of his inheritance on the first edition of a commercially viable and eerily lifelike “artificial human” named Adam, developing his new purchase’s personality with the help of his upstairs neighbour Miranda. A love triangle ensues between the three characters that tests the bounds of what human relationships involving robots can and should look like.
