A selection of recommended nonfiction.
Recent books that shaped my thinking on AI and technology
6- 7/10
The Maniac
Benjamin Labatut
A portrait of John von Neumann and a meditation on scientific progress, from the atomic bomb to AlphaGo
- 8/10
The Infinity Machine
Sebastian Mallaby
The inside story of DeepMind
- 8/10
The Power Law
Sebastian Mallaby
A history of venture capital and the investors who shaped Silicon Valley and the global tech economy
- 8/10
The Scaling Era: An Oral History of AI, 2019–2025
Dwarkesh Patel
Conversations with the world's top AI researchers on scaling, alignment, model capabilities and the human condition post AGI.
- 10/10
La parole aux machines
Thibaut Giraud
An examination of how large language models work and the technical and philosophical questions raised by machine intelligence
- 8/10
Why Machines Learn
Anil Ananthaswamy
The mathematical foundations of AI, from early perceptrons to the transformer architecture
All time Hall of Fame (all topics)
6- 10/10
The Blank Slate
Steven Pinker
The best and most profound book on human nature
- 10/10
La parole aux machines
Thibaut Giraud
An examination of how large language models work and the technical and philosophical questions raised by machine intelligence
- 10/10
La connaissance inutile
Jean François Revel
An analysis of why modern democracies, despite unprecedented access to information, systematically reject facts in favor of ideology and self-deception
- 9/10
Enlightenment Now
Steven Pinker
Why the world has become better, and what we can do to ensure it keeps getting better
- 9/10
The Enigma of reason
Hugo Mercier & Dan Sperber
An evolutionary argument that human reason developed primarily for social persuasion and justification rather than solitary truth-seeking
- 8/10
The Elephant in the Brain
Kevin Simler, Robin Hanson
How hidden motives and self-deception shape human behavior across everyday life and institutions like healthcare, education, and politics