The future is coming faster than anyone expected. With technology progressing at an increasingly rapid pace over the past couple of decades, people are more excited — or nervous — than ever. Some grin at the picture of utopian paradises like Star Trek while others cower at the prospect of dystopian landscapes like Terminator.
What kind of future should we expect?
To help ease your minds, we’ve compiled a list of five books covering the future of varying technological topics, from AI to the metaverse to robotics. See what these specialists have to say about the future of technology and humanity — and, spoiler, it’s not as grim as you might think.
The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman
We are approaching a critical threshold in the history of our species. Soon you will live surrounded by AIs. They will organize your life, operate your business and run core government services. You will live in a world of DNA printers and quantum computers, engineered pathogens and autonomous weapons, robot assistants and abundant energy. And none of us are prepared. As co-founder of the pioneering AI company DeepMind, part of Google, Mustafa Suleyman has been at the center of this revolution. The coming decade, he argues, will be defined by this wave of powerful, fast-proliferating new technologies. Suleyman shows how these forces will create immense prosperity but also threaten the nation-state, the foundation of global order. Can we forge a narrow path between catastrophe and dystopia?
Once Upon Tomorrow by Shurick Agapitov
Thirty years ago, the advent of the internet changed the world. Fifteen years ago, the world changed again with the widespread availability and adoption of smartphones that put the full power of the internet in the palm of our hands. As monumental as these advancements were, they were just the warmup for the change that’s coming next. In just a few years, we won’t think of “going on the internet” — we’ll be in the internet, living, working and playing in an endless virtual world. Visionary tech CEO Shurick Agapitov dives deep into this new age of the internet by unpacking exactly what the Metaverse is and what it will become. It’s not about pixels and computer chips; it’s a total paradigm shift that will revolutionize how people live their lives. (Read the full BookTrib review here.)
Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark
AI is the future — but what will that future look like? Will superhuman intelligence be our slave, or become our god? The rise of AI has the potential to transform our future more than any other technology — and there’s nobody better qualified or situated to explore that future than Max Tegmark, an MIT professor who’s helped mainstream research on how to keep AI beneficial. Tegmark empowers readers to join what may be the most important conversation of our time, asking the big questions about AI that lie on people’s minds. He doesn’t shy away from the full range of viewpoints or from the most controversial issues — from superintelligence to meaning, consciousness, and the ultimate physical limits on life in the cosmos.
The Heart and the Chip by Daniela Rus and Gregory Mone
There is a robotics revolution underway. A record 3.1 million robots are working in factories right now, doing everything from assembling computers to packing goods and monitoring air quality and performance. A far greater number of smart machines impact our lives in countless other ways, and we’re on the cusp of even more exciting opportunities. At once optimistic and realistic, roboticist Daniela Rus and science writer Gregory Mone provide an overview of the interconnected fields of robotics, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and reframe the way we think about intelligent machines while weighing the moral and ethical consequences of their role in society. Robots aren’t going to steal our jobs: they’re going to make us more capable, productive, and precise.
This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends by Nicole Perlroth
Zero-day: a software bug that allows a hacker to break into your devices and move around undetected. For decades, the United States government was the world’s dominant hoarder of zero-days — then the US lost control of its hoard and the market. Now those zero-days are in the hands of hostile nations and mercenaries who do not care if your vote goes missing, your clean water is contaminated, or our nuclear plants melt down. Based on years of reporting and hundreds of interviews, NYT reporter Nicole Perlroth lifts the curtain on a market in shadow, revealing the urgent threat faced by us all if we cannot bring the global cyberarms race to heel.
