Here are some relevant books from my ranked list of all EA-relevant (audio)books I've read, along with a little bit of commentary on them.
- The Precipice, by Ord, 2020
- See here for a list of things I've written that summarise, comment on, or take inspiration from parts of The Precipice.
- I recommend reading the ebook or physical book rather than audiobook, because the footnotes contain a lot of good content and aren't included in the audiobook
- Superintelligence may have influenced me more, but that’s just due to the fact that I read it very soon after getting into EA, whereas I read The Precipice after already learning a lot. I’d now recommend The Precipice first.
- Superintelligence, by Bostrom, 2014
- The Alignment Problem, by Christian, 2020
- This might be better than Superintelligence and Human-Compatible as an introduction to the topic of AI risk. It also seemed to me to be a surprisingly good introduction to the history of AI, how AI works, etc.
- But I'm not sure this'll be very useful for people who've already read/listened to a decent amount (e.g., the equivalent of 4 books) about those topics.
- This is more relevant to technical AI safety than to AI governance (though obviously the former is relevant to the latter anyway).
- Human-Compatible, by Russell, 2019
- The Strategy of Conflict, by Schelling, 1960
- See here for my notes on this book, and here for some more thoughts on this and other nuclear-risk-related books.
- This is available as an audiobook, but a few Audible reviewers suggest using the physical book due to the book's use of equations and graphs. So I downloaded this free PDF into my iPad's Kindle app.
- Destined for War, by Allison, 2017
- The Better Angels of Our Nature, by Pinker, 2011
- See here for some thoughts on this and other nuclear-risk-related books.
- Rationality: From AI to Zombies, by Yudkowsky, 2006-2009
- I.e., “the sequences”
- Age of Ambition, by Osnos, 2014
- See here for some thoughts on this and other China-related books.
- See here for some thoughts on this and other China-related books.
Thanks! In addition to the books in your authoritarianism reading list, I'd suggest two from this (partly long-term-oriented) course on AI governance:
Also:
Thanks Mauricio!
(Btw, if anyone else is interested in "These histories of institutional disasters and near-disasters", you can find them in footnote 1 of the linked post.)
In case anyone was wondering, Army of None seems to be available on US Audible and on Audiobooks.co.uk.