Have you been feeling trapped in an endless cycle of artificial intelligence hype and panic? You\u2019re not alone.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a chaotic time to make sense of the industry that\u2019s reshaping our lives, whether or not we like it. Last week, another AI company employee publicly resigned<\/a>, warning the technology \u201ccould kill us all by the end of the decade\u201d. Despite these dire warnings, AI companies have seen \u201cotherworldly<\/a>\u201d surges in revenue<\/a> and driven the US stock markets to new highs<\/a> as they continue to push AI tools into everything from public school classrooms<\/a> to law enforcement agencies<\/a>, as well as rushing to put up new datacenters across the country<\/a>.<\/p>\n Thankfully, the Guardian\u2019s tech reporters \u2013 and a few other tech experts we respect \u2013 are here to help. We\u2019ve compiled an essential reading list of smart books that explain and critique the AI industry; books that, while flawed, illustrate key viewpoints in the AI debates; and a few books that provide deeper political and social context, including some works of speculative fiction.<\/p>\n The best books on the AI industry<\/p>\n Empire of AI<\/a> \u2013 Karen Hao<\/p>\n The most intensively reported book on the AI industry so far, Empire of AI covers the rise of OpenAI, as well as the formation of Anthropic and OpenAI chief Sam Altman\u2019s split with Elon Musk. Parts of the book can feel a bit inside baseball, but the reporting is great and shows how the key American AI companies brought us to this point. Some early reviews of the book in 2025 suggested Hao\u2019s take on the industry was overly negative: she has since been entirely vindicated.<\/p>\n Project Maven<\/a> \u2013 Katrina Manson<\/p>\n An in-depth look at how the US military and Palantir worked together to build autonomous weapons and surveillance systems that are an actual catastrophic threat \u2013 not an imagined one.<\/p>\n Hyperscale<\/a> \u2013 Paris Marx<\/p>\n From the journalist and host of the Tech Won\u2019t Save Us<\/a> podcast, this is a deep investigation into the physical impact of AI data centers around the world, and the toll they are taking on local communities and the global environment.<\/p>\n Your Face Belongs to Us<\/a> \u2013 Kashmir Hill<\/p>\n A bestselling book on the rise of Clearview AI, the facial recognition company that has provided sweeping surveillance powers to law enforcement, businesses and billionaires, by building a massive database of online images.<\/p>\n The AI Con<\/a> \u2013 Emily M Bender and Alex Hanna<\/p>\n In response to claims that AI will soon far surpass all human capabilities, and that the technology is advancing so quickly it\u2019s on the verge of becoming a new life form, the authors of The AI Con have a simple response: \u201cLOL\u201d and \u201cthey wish\u201d.<\/a> These two tech critic academics argue that this kind of rhetoric is \u201cAI hype\u201d \u2013 lies and exaggerations that are helping rich people make more money \u201cby justifying data theft, motivating surveillance capitalism, and devaluing human creativity\u201d.<\/p>\n Flawed books on AI (that still might be worth reading)<\/p>\n If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies<\/a> \u2013 Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares<\/p>\n If you want to understand the perspective of the people panicking that AI will destroy humanity, this book is a good place to start. It\u2019s a \u201cdoomer classic\u201d that has been described as a book-length version of the tweet that made everyone freak out<\/a> this past week. Unfortunately for readers, its predictions of doom are based more on grand thought experiments than on an engagement with how AI is currently playing out in the world. The book \u201creads like a Scientology manual<\/a>\u201d, a New York Times reviewer wrote. For context, Yudkowsky\u2019s other writings include a nearly 700,000-word work of Harry Potter fan fiction<\/a> in which Harry applies the scientific method to magic.<\/p>\n Superintelligence<\/a> \u2013 Nick Bostrom<\/p>\n This 2014 book is one of the foundational AI texts for people like Elon Musk, who, alongside Bill Gates, has publicly praised<\/a> the bestseller. While the book is useful as a way of understanding the evolution of arguments about how a superintelligent AI might doom society, it\u2019s worth noting that the author is a controversial Swedish-born philosopher who was forced to apologize in 2023 for a decades-old email in which he claimed \u201cBlacks are more stupid than whites\u201d and used the N-word. In 2024, Oxford quietly shut down<\/a> the academic institute he had run, and Bostrom resigned.<\/p>\n Genesis: artificial intelligence, hope, and the human spirit <\/a>\u2013 Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, Craig Mundie and Eleanor Runde<\/p>\n Are you looking for AI insights from a man who faced frequent, wide-ranging and substantial allegations of war crimes<\/a>? Astonishingly, Henry Kissinger, the former US secretary of state who died in 2023, co-authored a bestselling 2024 book on AI with a billionaire former Google CEO, a less-wealthy former Microsoft executive, and a young lawyer who worked as Kissinger\u2019s researcher. The authors suggest that AI\u2019s ability to provide swift answers without explaining how it got them might end our current \u201cage of reason\u201d and lead humanity back to a \u201cpre-modern acceptance of unexplained authority\u201d. They also raise the possibility that \u201cthe companies that own and develop AI will accrue totalizing social, economic, military and political power\u201d, or that AI itself might become an all-powerful \u201cphilosopher king\u201d. OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT listed this as one of the five best books on artificial intelligence<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Technological Republic<\/a> \u2013 Alex Karp and Nicholas Zamiska<\/p>\n This manifesto by the CEO of Palantir was described by one Guardian colleague as one of the worst-written books he had ever read. It includes rambling attacks on the Palestinian American academic Edward Said, and goes further than Kissinger and his co-authors by more or less calling for turning tech leaders into philosopher kings. Prose aside, the book provides an important window into what top tech CEOs actually believe, and the way they regard AI and tech as a new nuclear bomb \u2013 which, in their view, is a good thing.<\/p>\n Deeper context: history, ideology and fiction<\/p>\n The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State<\/a> \u2013 Jill Lepore<\/p>\n A historical look at the political and industrial movements that have wanted to cede human agency and democratic rule to automation and authoritarianism. Just published, and a surprisingly fun read!<\/p>\n More <\/a>Everything Forever<\/a> \u2013 Adam Becker<\/p>\n Written by a science journalist, this book provides a good overview of the ideological origins of our current tech leaders. Exploring accelerationism, rationalism, doomerism and more, the book emphasizes how strange and detached from reality these powerful people\u2019s belief systems are.<\/p>\n Automating Inequality<\/a> \u2013 Virginia Eubanks<\/p>\n This 2018 book predates the generative AI boom, but it provides an essential view into how automated systems and algorithms reinforce social inequality. Modern AI has supercharged these same capabilities and is getting integrated into every critical system, making the book\u2019s insights into the harms of automated inequality even more important.<\/p>\n Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future<\/a> \u2013 Anita Say Chan<\/p>\n Our current systems of techno-surveillance and algorithmic discrimination are rooted in 19th-century campaigns against immigration and in favor of eugenics, the practice of selectively breeding humans to improve their intelligence or racial dominance, Chan argues. The book highlights the evolution of \u201ctechno-eugenicists\u201d and the persistence of feminist and immigrant activists who have fought against them, and is recommended by Seeta Pe\u00f1a Gangadharan, an associate professor at the London School of Economics who studies the community impact of data-driven technologies.<\/p>\n Prophecy: Prediction, Power and the Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI<\/a> \u2013 Carissa V\u00e9liz<\/p>\n Tracing the parallels between ancient seers, court astrologers, and contemporary algorithms, an Oxford University philosopher argues that \u201cthe main promise of prediction is not knowledge of the future but domination over others.\u201d Another recommendation from Pe\u00f1a Gangadharan and her LSE doctoral student, Anna Osterberg, who studies the political dynamics of online communities.<\/p>\n I, Robot <\/a>\u2013 Isaac Asimov<\/p>\n Though it was first published in 1950, Asimov\u2019s collection of short stories on the ethics of human-robot interactions remains influential, including his \u201cThree Laws of Robotics\u201d, starting with: \u201cA robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.\u201d As humor writer Alex Blechman has pointed out,<\/a> classic science fiction books and films remain deeply influential in the tech world, even though many tech companies seem set on engineering precisely the kinds of dangerous outcomes that science fiction warned against<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Lost Books of the Odyssey<\/a> \u2013 Zachary Mason<\/p>\n In 2007, a computer scientist from Palo Alto published a collection of 46 retellings of passages from the Odyssey<\/a> \u2013 a book that riffs on the way narratives get revised, fragmented, and reborn. Mason was actively imagining the prose AI might produce<\/a> long before the technology was available. Asked for his recommendations on AI-related books, Robin Sloan, a fiction author and media and technology writer, chose this novel, which he called \u201cthe first book of the LLM era, even though it was written entirely, and beautifully, by a human\u201d. He says the book \u201chas a lot to say about multiplicity, deep stories and symbols\u201d.<\/p>\n Labyrinths<\/a> \u2013 Jorge Luis Borges<\/p>\n Sloan also made the case for a classic, Borges\u2019 short story collection Labyrinths, as a book that \u201cgets your head in the right place to think usefully and richly about the deep weirdness and enormity of language models\u201d. The collection includes one of Borges\u2019 most famous stories, The Library of Babel<\/a>, first published in 1941, which describes and wrestles with a plan for an infinite library.<\/p>\n Nick Robins-Early contributed reporting<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Have you been feeling trapped in an endless cycle of artificial intelligence hype and panic? 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