Books like Genius Makers

01

The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

Walter Isaacson · Science

The Innovators is Walter Isaacson's history of the digital revolution, tracing the development of computers and the internet from Ada Lovelace's conceptualization of programming in the 1840s through the emergence of the modern internet, personal computer, and smartphone.

A kindred biography read.

02

Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Max Tegmark · Science

Life 3.0 is Max Tegmark's accessible survey of the questions raised by the prospect of human-level and superhuman artificial intelligence: What are the plausible paths to AGI?

Both dig into artificial intelligence.

03

Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies

Nick Bostrom · Science

Superintelligence is Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom's systematic analysis of what might happen if artificial intelligence systems become more capable than humans — and why that transition might represent one of the most significant risks in human history.

Both dig into artificial intelligence.

04

AI Superpowers

Kai-Fu Lee · Business

AI Superpowers is Kai-Fu Lee's argument that the geopolitical competition to lead in artificial intelligence is primarily a two-country race between the United States and China, and that the outcome will reshape the global economy in ways most people haven't started to reckon with.

Both dig into artificial intelligence.

05

The Alignment Problem

Brian Christian · Science

Brian Christian's The Alignment Problem examines a fundamental challenge in machine learning: how do you ensure that an artificial system actually pursues the goals you intend, rather than a close but dangerous approximation?

Both dig into artificial intelligence.

06

2001: A Space Odyssey

Arthur C. Clarke · Science fiction

2001: A Space Odyssey begins with prehistoric man-apes encountering a featureless black monolith that somehow catalyzes their cognitive leap from prey to hunter.

Both dig into artificial intelligence.

07

21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Yuval Noah Harari · Philosophy

Where Sapiens traced humanity's past and Homo Deus speculated about its future, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century plants itself in the present.

Both dig into artificial intelligence.

08

Atlas of AI

Kate Crawford · Science

Atlas of AI is Kate Crawford's account of what artificial intelligence actually is — not a disembodied intelligence but a physical system built from extracted minerals, underpaid labor, vast energy consumption, and accumulated data taken largely without meaningful consent.

Both dig into artificial intelligence.

09

Co-Intelligence

Ethan Mollick · Business

Co-Intelligence is Ethan Mollick's argument that large language models represent something genuinely new — not a search engine, not a simple automation tool — and that the right response is not fear or hype but active, informed experimentation.

Both dig into artificial intelligence.

10

Competing in the Age of AI

Marco Iansiti & Karim Lakhani · Business

Competing in the Age of AI is Marco Iansiti and Karim Lakhani's argument that artificial intelligence is not just another technology to be adopted, but a fundamental redesign of how firms operate — and that companies built from the start with AI at their core will eventually displace firms that try to bolt AI onto traditional operating models.

Both dig into artificial intelligence.

11

Deep Learning

Ian Goodfellow, Yoshua Bengio, and Aaron Courville · Science

Deep Learning by Ian Goodfellow, Yoshua Bengio, and Aaron Courville is the standard graduate-level textbook on the mathematical and computational foundations of deep neural networks.

Both dig into artificial intelligence.

12

Gödel, Escher, Bach

Douglas Hofstadter · Science

Douglas Hofstadter's Pulitzer Prize-winning debut, published in 1979, asks how meaning can arise from formal rules — how a biological machine can think, feel, and experience self-awareness.

Both dig into artificial intelligence.