Books like The Singularity is Nearer — picked by fans

As in my second recommendation, Harari adds the historical perspective to humanity’s survival.

The coming battle with AI is just the latest for humans. One hundred thousand years ago, at least six humanoid species inhabited the Earth and battled for survival. Today there is just one. Us. Homo sapiens.

Harari does a beautiful job of explaining how our species succeed in the battle for dominance. He describes how our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms; how did we come to believe in gods, nations, and human rights; to trust money, books, and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables, and consumerism?

We need to understand our past to properly control our future with AI.

I believe this book is a must read because Jennifer Doudna’s CRISPR-Cas 9 gene editing invention will be the second major technology to threaten the existence of humanity.

Doudna won a Nobel Prize for her discovery. She said, “The idea that you would affect evolution is a very profound thing.” Will CRISPR be used to create a new super humanoid species, or used by AI to create a species that is more to their liking and easier to control than humans? Or will AI use it to create deadly viruses to rid the Earth of the pesky human species?

Understanding the power of this breakthrough technology is essential to our understanding the future. I found it fascinating that the technology is based on the method bacteria developed 3 billion years ago to protect them from viruses.

This is a wonderful book that I found difficult to put down.

It is about a different technology that made profound changes in civilization: our ability to navigate and explore the world. That new technology allowed European civilization to threaten the civilizations of indigenous people on other continents. Will it be similar to AI threatening the civilization of humans?

I was particularly struck by the wars going on between people of the same culture, but living on neighboring islands. Their lack of cooperative existence put their cultures at risk. Will human civilization have the same lack of cooperation in dealing with artificial intelligence?

I loved the way Nexus looks at human history to consider how the flow of information has shaped us and our world.

For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. Will we lose that power to AI? I believe Harari adds an important historical perspective to complement Kurzweil’s view of the future.

I found Harari’s account about the role of Facebook’s AI in the persecution of the Rohingya minority in Myanmar to be fascinating. 

I have very seldom read a book with a protagonist I so wanted to win the day as Katherine Webb, the main character in Andrew Butters’s novel. She’s deeply inspiring—brave, compassionate, steadfast, loyal, and intelligent. She faces the challenges she meets without flinching, rebelling against a system designed to stifle individuality, creativity, and freedom of thought.

I kept putting myself in her place, wondering what I’d do if I lived in the planned, repressive society she inhabits. I can only hope I’d do as well.

What a phenomenal novel by Ann Leckie! I came across Ann Leckie’s series as I was working through books about cloning while I was writing my books. What do I love about it? The concepts, for sure: AI ships being negotiated, the entire idea of shipping minds around, a leader who sabotages herself to the detriment of her realm. All of these have been done to some extent before, but not at the scale that Ann Leckie takes on. She also manages to avoid some dead clone tropes and dead or dying AI tropes while she entertains. This novel (and series) were done well and the characters pop with personality. Loved it!

I absolutely love Nick Bostrom's book because it dives deep into the fascinating yet daunting future of artificial intelligence, a topic that resonates with my own work. Bostrom's exploration of how superintelligent AI could emerge and the profound risks it poses is both thought-provoking and essential reading for anyone curious about technology's trajectory.

His insights on the challenges of control and alignment really struck a chord with me, as they highlight the importance of designing AI systems that prioritize human values. This book not only raises critical questions but also inspires a sense of urgency to navigate the future responsibly, making it a personal favorite and a vital resource for anyone interested in the intersection of AI and ethics.

This book surpasses others in its genre in portraying technological advancements' unintended consequences: disruption of social order and diminished human value. 

A major focus is how humans will co-exist with AI in this brave new world. This theme continues in Lee's co-authored book AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future (2021). This book presents short stories of life in different corners of the world in the age of AI, each followed by a scientific analysis.

Mustafa Suleyman and Kai-fu Lee are leaders in the global pack of scientists behind the technological tsunami. They have roots in rivaling camps and operate in different camps. They are the best testimony to the reality that "nations may be building walls, but the people creating mankind’s next chapter are already operating without walls."

Telving’s book is ahead of its time in exploring the deep questions of what our humanity is, with perspectives on our future life with AI and intelligent robots. I was particularly intrigued by the ways that the author explores how we evaluate our own consciousness, how we tend to anthropomorphize animals and objects, and the tricky ethical questions around how to legislate a life with robots. Telving deals with one subject that had been far off my radar in the form of the difference between the hard and easy problem of consciousness. It’s a very philosophical question, but in today’s world, where our values, beliefs, and interactions are in mutation, this understanding of consciousness is ever more pertinent.

Technology is always moving on. And so it should be forgiven the author that many of the concrete examples in this book are now somewhat dated. They provide some interesting insight into the history of computing and media technology, but the real value of Roszak’s argument lies in his analysis of how—thanks to computer technology—society has become obsessed with “information”. It’s almost a cult. But information is not knowledge, data does not in itself provide understanding. In fact, in a peculiarly paradoxical way, the more information we have, the less we actually know. Thirty years later, as we swim daily in the disinformation of the murky waters of social media and disappear down Youtube rabbit holes, Roszak’s point seems more pertinent than ever.