Reading list
Books that have shaped how the tech industry, its critics, and the public think about AI — from alignment and existential risk to surveillance, labor, and power. Each entry links to the publisher's page. Books are sold, not free; many are available through public libraries.
The rest of this library links only to free resources. This page is the exception: these books are sold by their publishers, and each card links to the publisher's page. One title — Rationality: From AI to Zombies — is also free to read online, and its card links to the free Resource Hub entry instead of a store.
Most public libraries carry these titles in print, ebook or audiobook form, and many lend ebooks through apps like Libby or Hoopla with a free library card. You can check which libraries near you hold a title on WorldCat ↗, or ask your local library to order a copy — most take requests.
Nick Bostrom · 2014 · Oxford University Press
Examines what happens if machine intelligence surpasses human intelligence, and argues for taking the control problem seriously well before it arrives.
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Eliezer Yudkowsky & Nate Soares · 2025 · Little, Brown
Argues that current AI development techniques make a catastrophic outcome from superhuman AI a real risk rather than a fringe concern, and calls for international coordination to slow the race toward it.
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Stuart Russell · 2019 · Viking
A founding AI researcher's case for redesigning how machines are built to pursue human objectives, rather than fixed goals that might be specified wrong.
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Brian Christian · 2020 · W. W. Norton
Traces the technical and philosophical history of trying to make machine-learning systems behave the way their builders intend.
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Max Tegmark · 2017 · Knopf
A physicist's survey of possible futures as AI capabilities grow, from near-term economic disruption to long-term questions about what kind of future people want.
Publisher page ↗Eliezer Yudkowsky · 2015 · Machine Intelligence Research Institute
A collection of essays on reasoning, bias, and decision-making, originally written for the LessWrong community, that shaped early AI-alignment discussions. Already in the Resource Hub.
View in the Resource Hub →
Ruha Benjamin · 2019 · Polity
Examines how supposedly neutral technology can encode and deepen racial bias, and what building against that pattern would require.
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Cathy O'Neil · 2016 · Crown
A former Wall Street quant's account of how opaque algorithms used in hiring, credit, and policing can reinforce inequality while appearing objective.
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Kate Crawford · 2021 · Yale University Press
Traces the physical and human costs behind AI systems — mineral extraction, labor, data — that are left out of most discussions of the technology.
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Shoshana Zuboff · 2019 · PublicAffairs
Argues that tech companies built a new economic model around extracting and monetizing personal behavioral data, with AI as the engine.
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Virginia Eubanks · 2018 · St. Martin's Press
Follows how automated eligibility systems and predictive algorithms affect people navigating welfare, homelessness services, and child protective services.
Publisher page ↗Timnit Gebru · 2026 · Simon & Schuster
Part memoir and part manifesto: the AI ethics researcher's account of her path from Apple, Stanford, and Google to one of the field's most prominent critics.
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Dan McQuillan · 2022 · Bristol University Press
Argues that AI as currently deployed amplifies existing inequalities and authoritarian tendencies, and sets out ways for workers and communities to push back.
Publisher page ↗Clarissa Redwine & JS Tan · 2026 · Haymarket Books
An account of the tech worker movement since 2016 — walkouts, protests over military contracts, union drives — and the backlash from tech executives that followed.
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Emily M. Bender & Alex Hanna · 2025 · Harper
Two researchers make the case that much of what is marketed as "AI" is overstated, and offer a framework for evaluating AI claims critically.
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Gil Durán · 2026 · Simon & Schuster
A journalist's investigation into the antidemocratic political ideologies gaining influence among a segment of Silicon Valley's most powerful figures.
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Naomi Klein & Astra Taylor · 2026 · Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Argues that climate breakdown and technological upheaval are fueling a distinct strain of authoritarian politics, and examines who is organizing against it.
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Alexander C. Karp & Nicholas W. Zamiska · 2025 · Crown
Palantir's CEO and a colleague argue that Silicon Valley should re-engage with national defense and public purpose. Already in the Resource Hub.
View in the Resource Hub →
Henry A. Kissinger, Eric Schmidt & Craig Mundie · 2024 · Little, Brown
Kissinger's final book, co-written with two technologists, on how AI could reshape geopolitics, philosophy, and human self-understanding.
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Mustafa Suleyman with Michael Bhaskar · 2023 · Crown
A DeepMind and Inflection AI co-founder's argument that AI and synthetic biology together represent a wave of technological power existing institutions aren't built to contain.
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Ethan Mollick · 2024 · Portfolio
A Wharton professor's practical framework for working alongside AI tools day to day, based on his own experimentation and research.
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Antonio García Martínez · 2016 · Harper
An insider memoir of Silicon Valley startup and ad-tech culture from a former Facebook product manager.
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Fei-Fei Li · 2023 · Flatiron Books
The computer vision pioneer's memoir of building ImageNet and helping launch the deep learning era, alongside her own immigrant story.
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Karen Hao · 2025 · Penguin Press
A tech reporter's history of OpenAI and the broader industry's rise, drawing comparisons to empire-building.
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Cade Metz · 2021 · Dutton
A New York Times reporter's history of the researchers who built modern deep learning and the competition between labs that followed.
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Anna Wiener · 2020 · MCD
A memoir of working in Silicon Valley startup culture during the 2010s, from an outsider's-eye view.
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Brian Merchant · 2023 · Little, Brown
Connects the 19th-century Luddite movement to today's automation and gig-economy labor fights.
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Amy Webb · 2019 · PublicAffairs
Examines the nine companies — six American, three Chinese — shaping the direction of AI development globally.
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Adam Becker · 2025 · Basic Books
A science journalist's critical look at the ideologies — superintelligence, space colonization, transhumanism — shaping how some tech leaders talk about AI's future.
Publisher page ↗Gary Marcus · 2024 · MIT Press
A cognitive scientist and longtime AI critic's argument for specific regulatory guardrails on the AI industry.
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Ray Kurzweil · 2024 · Viking
The futurist's follow-up to his 2005 book, updating his predictions for when AI could match and exceed human intelligence.
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William MacAskill · 2015 · Avery
An introduction to effective altruism — using evidence and reasoning to do the most good with limited resources — that shaped much of the thinking later applied to AI safety. Covers effective altruism broadly, not AI specifically.
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