Essential AI Reading: 5 Recently Published Must-Read Books
/by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.
Artificial Intelligence is everywhere, and whether we are aware of it or not, it has infiltrated every aspect of our daily lives. From social media, the internet and TV streaming services to digital assistants, banking and healthcare apps, many of us come across AI hundreds of times a day at work, at home and even in the car, and are for the most part completely oblivious.
In the publishing industry, AI is equally omnipresent. Early applications included book recommendation algorithms adopted by tech platforms and software used by authors to assist with grammar and spelling, but we are now witnessing AI-based applications emerging across cover design, editing and formatting, translation, audiobook narration, and of course, rather controversially, content generation.
Change has happened, and is happening, fast. Debates around AI tend to vary dramatically in tone, with some heralding the game-changing genius at play and others warning of the existential threat posed by the technology. Learning about AI is key to better understanding how it affects us—for better and for worse, how it will shape our future, how the way we live and work will change, and how we might be able to harness it for the good of humanity.
Unsurprisingly, there is no shortage of books being published every year on this hugely important topic—some offering practical solutions towards working with AI to enhance our lives and others painting a pessimistic picture of the future. But with such a fast moving landscape, the bestselling AI titles from just a few years ago are already losing their relevance. With this in mind, here is a list of our recommended AI books that have been published within the last year.
The Coming Wave: Technology, Power and the 21st Century’s Greatest Dilemma
By Mustafa Suleyman
Hardback—Bodley Head/Crown—September 7, 2023
CEO of Inflection AI and Co-founder of Google-acquired DeepMind, AI researcher and entrepreneur Mustafa Suleyman is an authoritative voice on AI, and in particular AI ethics. His new book is a fantastic guide to the technological revolution which has only just begun, and the transformed world it will create. Suleyman analyses “the containment problem” which he considers to be the major challenge of our age and looks at how AI tools will help address global challenges and create vast wealth, but also generate unimaginable global upheaval. A Sunday Times bestseller in the UK, The Coming Wave is both a stark warning to society and a hopeful guide to where we go next.
Power and Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence
By Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans and Avi Goldfarb
Hardback—Harvard Business Review Press—November 15, 2022
From the authors of bestseller Prediction Machines, this timely and thought-provoking follow up examines how we can profit from our ability to exploit the disruptive economics of AI. Filled with illuminating insights, useful case examples and practical advice, the book explores the successes and failures of AI in different fields, while showing how industries and organizations can leverage the coming AI disruptions to work for them, instead of against them.
I, Human: AI, Automation, and the Quest to Reclaim What Makes Us Unique
By Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic
Hardback—Harvard Business Review Press—February 28, 2023
In this refreshingly original take on the AI debate, psychologist Chamorro-Premuzic looks at how AI technologies are impacting human behavior and changing our everyday habits. Exploring our complicated relationship with technology, the book aims to help us stand out and thrive when many of our decisions are being made for us. As AI becomes smarter and more human-like, he advocates for a doubling down on our uniquely human qualities, such as our curiosity, adaptability, empathy, humility and emotional intelligence.
Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era
By James Barrat
Paperback—Quercus—July 20, 2023
Originally published 10 years ago when it was lauded by Elon Musk as one of five books everyone should read about the future, Barrat’s enlightening, and profoundly scary, bestseller is back with an urgent new preface and bragging rights to match (many of his predictions came true). The book poses serious questions around the ethics, history and future perils of our heedless pursuit of advanced AI and asks big questions such as can we coexist with beings whose intelligence dwarfs our own? And will they allow us to?
Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence
By Kate Crawford
Paperback—Yale University Press—October 11, 2022
Written by a leading scholar of the social implications of AI, Atlas of AI is a critically acclaimed book that investigates the darker side of AI’s success. Described as “timely and urgent” by Science Magazine, the book draws on more than a decade of research to reveal how this planetary network is fueling a shift toward undemocratic governance and increased inequity, showing many of the lesser known hidden costs of AI—from natural resources and labor to privacy, equality and freedom.
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