Best Books Roundups
Artificial intelligence went from a niche topic to the defining story of our era, and our awards lists tracked it the whole way. These are the best books on AI we have honored: the optimists, the skeptics, the builders and the investigators.
*This list does not include books published in 2026, which are currently under review as part of our 2026 awards program.
by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares
The starkest case yet against racing to superintelligence. Yudkowsky and Soares argue, without hedging, that building smarter-than-human AI on our current path ends badly for everyone.
by De Kai
AI pioneer De Kai reframes our relationship with artificial intelligence as parenting: we are raising AI on our behavior, so we had better model well.
by Salman Khan
Khan Academy founder Salman Khan’s hopeful, credible map of how AI will transform education. Our Most Important Book of 2024.
by Fei-Fei Li
Fei-Fei Li’s luminous memoir of immigrating to America and helping invent modern AI, and her case for keeping humanity at its center.
by Eric Schmidt
Eric Schmidt and co-authors on how AI reshapes power, statecraft and the human spirit: a geopolitical briefing for the intelligence age.
by Ray Kurzweil
Ray Kurzweil returns to his famous prediction with two decades of evidence, and argues the merge between humans and machines is closer than you think.
by Hilke Schellmann
Investigative journalist Hilke Schellmann exposes the AI already deciding who gets hired, promoted and fired, often with no idea what it’s doing.
by Joy Buolamwini
Algorithmic Justice League founder Joy Buolamwini’s account of discovering bias baked into facial recognition, and her fight to make AI accountable.
by Mustafa Suleyman with Michael Bhaskar
DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman on the containment problem: what happens when AI and synthetic biology outrun our ability to control them.
by Stephen Wolfram
Stephen Wolfram’s remarkably clear explanation of what large language models actually do: still the best technical primer for curious non-engineers.
by Kashmir Hill
Kashmir Hill’s gripping investigation of Clearview AI and the secretive startup that ended anonymity: privacy journalism at its best.
by Kevin Roose
Kevin Roose’s nine rules for being human in the age of automation: practical optimism for anyone worried about the robots.
by Flynn Coleman
Flynn Coleman’s early, prescient exploration of how artificial intelligence forces us to redefine what makes us human, years before the ChatGPT era.
by Kai-Fu Lee
Kai-Fu Lee’s influential account of the AI race between Silicon Valley and China: the book that framed the geopolitics of AI.
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