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 & Peter Norvig · 2020 · Pearson
The standard university textbook on artificial intelligence, now in its fourth edition, covering search, logic, planning, probabilistic reasoning, machine learning and the ethics of AI. Its official site offers free code, exercises and slides.
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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 →
Darren McKee · 2023 · Independently published
A plainly written introduction to AI and superintelligence risk for readers without a technical background, explaining how image generators and language models work, why advanced AI may be hard to control or align, and what steps citizens and societies can take now. The author is profiled in Who's Who.
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Garrison Lovely · 2026 · OR Books & Nation Books
A journalist's account of the AI industry's push to build systems that can replace human labor, covering the debate over AI risk and proposals for how to respond.
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Richard Rhodes · 1986 · Simon & Schuster
A Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the scientists and the Manhattan Project that built the first nuclear weapons. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has called it his favorite book and has assigned it to employees.
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Matthew Botvinick · 2026 · Princeton University Press
An AI researcher examines how artificial intelligence could destabilize democratic institutions through unemployment, emergency powers and politicized surveillance, and argues for stronger institutions and more engaging forms of citizen participation. Published in the United States on October 6, 2026.
Publisher page ↗Julian Posada · 2026 · University of California Press
An information scientist's study of the largely invisible workforce that generates and annotates the data behind AI, drawing on research on three platforms in the Venezuelan data work sector and arguing that digital platforms extract value from precarious labor. Paperback edition.
Publisher page ↗David Karpf · 2026 · W. W. Norton & Company
A political scientist at George Washington University looks back at thirty years of techno-optimist promises, tracing how tech companies and venture capitalists gained wealth and political power by selling visions of the future, and arguing for regaining public control over it. Listed by the publisher as not yet published.
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Andrew Guthrie Ferguson · 2026 · NYU Press
A law professor examines how data from smart devices, apps and other everyday self-surveillance can be used by police, prosecutors and shifting political priorities, and what legal protections could limit that use.
Publisher page ↗Sarah Ciston, David M. Berry, Anthony C. Hay, Mark C. Marino, Peter Millican, Jeff Shrager, Arthur I. Schwarz & Peggy Weil · 2026 · The MIT Press
A critical study of Joseph Weizenbaum's ELIZA chatbot (1965–1968), drawing on rediscovered original source code and archival scripts to trace how it was built and how it shaped ideas about AI. Published open access, so it is also free to read online.
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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.
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Francine Berman · 2026 · MIT Press
A public-interest technology pioneer argues that social media, AI chatbots and search engines should be built and managed like critical infrastructure — with the safety expectations we apply to roads, bridges and the power grid — and lays out responsible design, development, use and regulatory strategies.
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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.
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Cory Doctorow · 2026 · Verso Books / Farrar, Straus and Giroux (MCD)
Describes the "reverse centaur" — a worker made to serve as a machine's assistant — and examines the hype and investment behind AI and what useful tools might remain after the bubble.
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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Leif Weatherby · 2025 · University of Minnesota Press
A literary and media theorist argues that large language models do not simulate cognition but create culture, and that the humanities need new tools to evaluate them.
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Wendy Liu · 2020 · Repeater Books
A former startup founder and software engineer combines memoir and manifesto to critique the tech industry and argue for taking technology out of the hands of capital.
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Brandeis Hill Marshall · 2022 · Wiley
A data scientist's examination of how choices at each stage of the data lifecycle — collection, modeling, deployment — produce harm, particularly for Black communities and other marginalized groups, with guidance for practitioners on building more responsible data practices.
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Quinn Slobodian & Ben Tarnoff · 2026 · Harper
A historian and a tech journalist examine Elon Musk as a political and economic force, arguing that "Muskism" — sovereignty through technology — defines twenty-first-century capitalism the way Fordism defined the twentieth, and tracing its roots from apartheid-era South Africa through DOGE.
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Ben Green · 2026 · The MIT Press
A scholar of technology policy argues that conventional data science has been both too ambitious and not ambitious enough, and lays out practices that account for social context, politics and the people affected when algorithms are used to address injustice.
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Blaise Agüera y Arcas · 2025 · The MIT Press
A Google researcher's unified account of intelligence across evolution, computing, and minds, building on the view that brains and neural networks alike work by predicting the future. Paperback edition.
Publisher page ↗Ben Buchanan & Tantum Collins · 2026 · Crown
Two former White House officials — Buchanan was the first White House Special Advisor for AI and now advises Anthropic; Collins served on the National Security Council after five years at Google DeepMind — argue that democracies must lead in AI, and describe the policy debates over chips, China and AI risk they took part in. Published November 10, 2026.
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Sandy Carter · 2025 · Wiley
A guide for leaders on navigating the intersection of AI and human expertise, focusing on trends like technical convergence and digital twins while prioritizing ethics and intuition.
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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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Gleb Tsipursky · 2026 · Georgetown University Press
A behavioral scientist and future-of-work consultant presents a leadership playbook for the human side of AI adoption, covering why pilots stall for human rather than technical reasons, employee profiles from AI skeptics to enthusiasts, psychological safety, guardrails and adoption metrics.
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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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Ethan Mollick · 2026 · Portfolio
A Wharton professor's guide to living and working with AI systems that are sometimes, but not always, better than you. Published October 20, 2026, as the follow-up to Co-Intelligence.
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Joanna Stern · 2026 · Harper
A technology journalist's account of a year spent letting AI into nearly every corner of her life, from work to home.
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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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Walter Isaacson · 2014 · Simon & Schuster
A history of the people who built the computer and the internet, from Ada Lovelace to the Google founders, arguing that innovation is a team sport.
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Walter Isaacson · 2023 · Simon & Schuster
A biography based on two years of close access to Musk, covering Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter/X, and the management style and risk appetite behind them.
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Walter Isaacson · 2011 · Simon & Schuster
The authorized biography of Apple's co-founder, drawn from more than forty interviews with Jobs and interviews with family, colleagues, and rivals.
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Sebastian Mallaby · 2026 · Penguin Press
A biographer of Alan Greenspan and venture capital draws on more than thirty hours of interviews with Demis Hassabis to trace DeepMind's path from a London startup to Google's AI engine room and the race to build artificial general intelligence.
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Frances Haugen · 2023 · Little, Brown and Company
A memoir by the former Facebook product manager who disclosed thousands of internal documents in 2021, describing her path into tech, what the documents showed about the company's own research on harms, and her case for transparency rules for social platforms.
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Sarah Wynn-Williams · 2025 · Flatiron Books
A memoir by Facebook's former director of global public policy, recounting her years working with the company's leadership on international policy. Meta disputes the book's account and obtained an arbitration order barring her from promoting it.
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Josh Tyrangiel · 2026 · Simon & Schuster
A former Bloomberg Businessweek editor follows teachers, doctors and public servants using AI to solve specific problems in government services, medicine, education and human connection.
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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.
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Gary Marcus · 2024 · MIT Press
A cognitive scientist and longtime AI critic's argument for specific regulatory guardrails on the AI industry.
Publisher page ↗Paris Marx · 2026 · Riverhead Books
A tech journalist and host of the Tech Won't Save Us podcast investigates the physical costs of the data center boom — energy, water, and land — behind AI, cryptocurrency, and cloud computing. On sale October 20, 2026, and available for pre-order.
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Paulina Borsook · 2000 · PublicAffairs
A Wired contributing writer's critique of the libertarian mindset she observed among Silicon Valley technologists in the 1990s, and how that outlook shaped the industry's relationship to government and community.
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Stephen Witt · 2025 · Viking
A technology journalist's biography of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, tracing the company's rise from gaming chips to the dominant supplier of AI hardware and its bet on deep learning. Won the 2025 FT and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award.
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Natasha Singer · 2026 · W. W. Norton & Company
A New York Times technology reporter's account of how tech companies and their philanthropies promoted coding classes, devices and now AI tools in public schools, and what those campaigns meant for students, teachers and education policy.
Publisher page ↗Will Manidis & Joe Roberts · 2026 · Self-published
A free, book-length essay (about 145 pages) forecasting who will capture lasting profits from AI. The authors argue frontier models become commodities within months, so value accrues to scarce positions AI must pass through, such as distribution and payment channels. Includes fictional scenarios illustrating its forecasts. Free to read online.
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Neal Stephenson · 1992 · Bantam Books
A cyberpunk novel following hacker and pizza courier Hiro Protagonist as he investigates a threat affecting people in the Metaverse and the physical world, with connections to ancient Sumerian language. Fiction, not nonfiction.
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Calestous Juma · 2016 · Oxford University Press
A historical analysis of why societies resist new technologies — from coffee and electricity to genetically modified crops — tracing concerns about moral values, health, environmental safety, economic distribution, cultural identity, and social stability.
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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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Balaji Srinivasan · 2022 · Self-published
The former Coinbase CTO lays out a plan for internet-native communities to acquire land and seek diplomatic recognition as a successor to the nation state. Free to read online.
Publisher page ↗Robert Wright · 2026 · Simon & Schuster
The author of Nonzero and The Evolution of God argues that AI's advance is driven by evolutionary dynamics, and asks whether humanity can marshal the political, moral and spiritual resources to guide it.
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Greg Egan · 1994 · Millennium
A hard science-fiction novel about simulated people living as software copies, exploring artificial life, simulated reality and what makes a mind continuous. Won the 1995 John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Fiction, not nonfiction.
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Yanis Varoufakis · 2024 · Melville House
An economist's argument that big tech has replaced capitalism's markets and profit with platforms and rents, producing a new system he calls technofeudalism, and an account of what that shift means for democracy, climate action and global power.
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Walter M. Miller Jr. · 1959 · Harper Voyager
A classic science-fiction novel in which monks preserve scraps of scientific knowledge through centuries after a nuclear war, as civilization slowly rebuilds and risks repeating itself. A touchstone in debates about technology, knowledge and cyclical history. Fiction, not nonfiction.
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