Books like The Most Human Human — picked by fans

The art of computer programming is a lot like the art of writing: It's not just about what your program says but about how it says it. One of the reasons I like the C and C++ languages—which I picked up in the late 1990s and haven't put down since—is that, as compiled, non-sandboxed languages, they promise total control over the machine. Show me where you want each byte of data to go in memory; show me the machine instructions you want; and I can make C++ do that for you. 

I am an engineer, scientist, turned technology manager who works in the field of Artificial Intelligence, and have gotten lost in Sci-Fi since I could first read. Now I want to share the stories that keep me awake at night.

I was raised in a large family, and we were taught to be respectful, honest, and polite to everyone. I've never been able to understand the mind of a 'nasty' person or how a person can hurt another. When these people are brought to justice, how can we know they are telling the truth?

Expanding on this, I started thinking about Artificial Intelligence—could this be the creation that gives us the way to see into a person's mind; to find out what crime they have committed? But then I thought, what if the actual creator was a criminal? How would anyone even know? That was the route of my research which led to i4Ni being written.

Since I was a little boy, I’ve been passionate about technology and its potential to help people. After 25 years working in high tech, digital transformation, and artificial intelligence with a career spanning Intel, Google DeepMind, and a few successful startups I co-founded, I’ve pivoted to helping people, particularly leaders, understand how AI will transform business, education, and society, and how they can use AI to create new value and solve problems for people. AI is about to change everything about everything, and these books will help readers understand what’s coming and prepare themselves for humanity’s journey into an age of abundant intelligence.

An accident of professional life led us, Jean-Paul Vanbremeersch and Andrée Ehresmann, to meet in 1979. Jean-Paul was then a young physician who was also interested in problems of emergence and complexity. Andrée was a mathematician working in Analysis and, more recently, in Category Theory with Charles Ehresmann (her late husband). With Charles, she shared the idea that: “a category theory approach could open a wealth of possibilities to the understanding of complex processes of any kind.”This idea appealed to Jean-Paul who suggested that we both try applying it to problems of emergence, complexity, and cognition. It led to our 40 years old development of MES. 

I have researched human origins professionally for almost decades by studying the trail of fossils that have survived millions of years. But, before then, and since I can remember, I’ve been a lover of adventure and science fiction stories in all formats: action movies (Indiana Jones, Back to the Future), TV shows (The X Files), novels (Jack London!), or anime and manga (Ghost in the Shell, Akira, Alita). So, I guess my mind constantly travels from the past to the future. I think this list will also work as a time machine for others.

I had the supreme good fortune to know Berlin (1909–97) for nearly twenty-five years, and to work with him as his principal editor for most of that time; I continued this work after his death and it still occupies me now. He was one of the great human beings of the twentieth century, an essayist and letter-writer of genius, and a bewitching bridge between academia and the general civilised life of the mind. His ideas are fertile and illuminating to this day, and the immediately recognisable voice of his prose is the best possible intellectual company.

I’ve always loved unreliable narrators and how they place us as readers into the role of detectives, piecing the "truth" of a story together. The narrators I’ve picked below vary in their intent: some deliberately deceive, and others do so unconsciously or through omission. In several, the twist hinges on the use of an unreliable narrator, while in others, narrative unreliability poses a moral dilemma for the reader. In a few, an added layer of unreliability emerges: the narrator’s perception is distorted by technology. In an age of AI, simulations, and deep fakes, the unreliable narrator is arguably more needed than ever, holding a mirror up to the unreliability of our own world. 

I am a psychiatrist, researcher, and bioethicist who has conducted studies on infectious diseases, genetics, the mind and the brain at the National Institutes of Health, in the rain forest of Papua New Guinea, at Columbia University, and elsewhere, seeking and discovering knowledge and scientific truths about nature, people, and the world. I have published 10 books, over 200 scientific articles, and essays in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere, conveying the excitement and extraordinary power of scientific discoveries, but also the moral, cultural, and psychological dilemmas that can arise, and the ways we can best address these.

I grew up in Los Angeles and attended a progressive experiential learning school. The libraries were my classroom, the parks my playgrounds, and our twice-weekly field trips developed my journalistic skills. The week began with a contract agreement between myself and my teacher. My education made me a self-starter. My home was emotionally volatile. I became curious about healing: aligning my heart, mind, body, and spirit. My path unfolded to me. I became an actress on Broadway as my parents divorced and my school fell apart. My training in my mobile school delivered me into the real world. I was hungry to feel whole. Thus began my journey.