100 books like Rise of the Robots

Egan is an Australian science fiction writer.

To my mind, he’s written better about AI than any other science fiction writer, because he takes it seriously. He recognizes it represents enormous change.

Permutation City is about a time in history when uploading becomes possible and very rich people can upload themselves into machines that operate quickly and in real time.

Poorer people have to upload themselves into machines that process very slowly and so they live very slow versions of life. 

The first comprehensive book on new tech and its impacts, following big steps made in AI progress in the early 2010s. The authors bring home the point that we are undergoing a watershed moment as tools no longer substitute merely for physical labor encroach on mental tasks – hence the book’s title.

After centuries of fleeing blue-collar jobs to take refuge in cerebral work, we are being left with nowhere to run. Not only that, but past technology would automate a given task, whereas the looming Artificial Intelligence is bound to intervene in many, many tasks currently handled by humans.

This book is one of the nuttiest I’ve read in its imaginings of a modern world on steroids. The part that teases most is that its predictions might come true.

I know our smartphones and laptops have changed our world, but cures that would extend longevity ad infinitum? Neural interfaces that would connect us directly to the internet? Nanobots that would reduce the cost of goods to zero?

Because the topic of modernity has come to engross me so, the big question always is, “How far will it carry us?” The answer to which (according to Kurzweil) is much farther than you can possibly imagine and much sooner than you think. One should have one’s mind blown every couple of years, and Kurzweil does exactly that.

With recent advances in large language models such as GPT-4, it is predicted that AI capabilities in terms of general decision making and problem solving may exceed that of humans even in less than a decade. Is this good or bad news?

This book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand and navigate this difficult topic. Of particular interest are Bostrom’s two groundbreaking observations: the orthogonality thesis (any level of intelligence can be combined with any final goal) and the instrumental convergence thesis (any sufficiently non-trivial final goal will also create instrumental goals of self-preservation, efficiency, creativity, and unbounded resource acquisition).

A top pick for anyone who wants to figure out the prospects for the human civilization in the face of superhuman artificial general intelligence.

AI is arguably the most disruptive technology that humankind has ever developed. AI development has come in different waves since the 1950s and, over time, the machine intelligence has increased.

Where will this ongoing trend lead us in the future? I love Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan’s book for two chief reasons: On the one hand, I found it highly rewarding as a reader to learn about the future of AI and its practical impact on our everyday life by gaining insights into today’s variety of AI methods, the challenges they pose as well as into how those challenges will be overcome in the next 10 to 20 years.

On the other hand, I have been deeply impressed by the strength of the author team with a complimentary skillset. While Kai-Fu Lee worked both in Chinese and US-American internet sector as a leading software engineer, thereby combining very interesting perspectives,… show more.

Diamandis’ book is one of hope, sort of like applying Kurzweil’s futurism to pure business. And like his friend Kurzweil, the author’s enthusiasm is contagious: one emerges from this book ready to march forth and change the world.

Peter insists that while we may look back at the successes of Zuckerberg or Musk, the best is yet to come; that looking back a few decades from now, people will think: “this was a formidable time to set out and start a business”.

Indeed that was the case at the first stages of every industrial revolution, and the 4th should bear no different. Unless entrepreneurship is suffocated by Big Tech incumbents and overly cautious regulators. 

To understand why some workers are paid more than others, you have to understand how skills are valued and rewarded in the labor market, and how that has changed, as the economy has evolved.

Focused on the United States, Katz and Goldin provide a sweeping overview of how education leads to skills and income, drawing on the most well-established theories in economics. It misses some important causes of inequality, but is essential for understanding the one of the deepest economic forces governing wages: the supply and demand of human capital.

What holds the future of globalization in store?

I learned a lot from Baldwin’s insightful book, which posits a fast and dramatic rise of digital service trade between high- and low-wage countries.

Such services could range from well-known digital back-office services, such as airline ticketing in India, to more speculative “global robotics”, dubbed “globotics”, such as cross-border controlling of robots via virtual reality devices.

Baldwin points to new opportunities emerging to developing economies that hitherto were unable to gain from the globalization of manufacturing value chains. But he also warns of potentially dramatic social consequences in high-wage countries.

Whether you agree or disagree with his diagnosis, this is essential reading to be prepared for the next wave of globalization and its potential social disruptions.

Good to Great is one of the best business books written, but it doesn't tell the full story. While Collins has other books, the most important companion to my prior recommendation is Great By Choice. Really, these books should be seen as a Part 1 and a Part 2.

The elements in this book are every bit as important–specifically, the "20 Mile March" piece is one that continues to resonate with me. More battle-tested wisdom from one of the world's greatest business scholars.

It is hardly news that housework is gendered. But in this classic study Cowan, by taking housewifery seriously as work and kitchen utensils and appliances seriously as technologies, opens up the whole panorama of production and consumption in a domestic setting. The influx of new appliances, and in a more convenient form old materials (such as powdered soap) in the early decades of the 20th century worked to, in a sense, “industrialize” the home. Unlike factory workers, however, housewives were unpaid, isolated, and unspecialized. Their managerial role shrank (hired help disappeared from most homes)  and rather than being drained of meaning, like the work of factory hands, theirs became burdened with portentous implications of love, devotion, and creativity. Finally, as housework became “easy,” standards rose. At one time changing the bed might have amounted to putting the bottom sheet in the wash and the top sheet on the bottom,… show more.