Will artificial intelligence dominate our lives? These books spell out a range of possibilities.

Artificial intelligence (AI) may well be the most important technology emerging in the 21st century. It’s certainly on a par with genetics in its potential to reshape the way we live our lives. The eighteen AI books reviewed here, including six works of nonfiction and twelve novels, examine the impact of the field from a wide range of different perspectives. Each of the titles is followed by the linked headline of its review.

Feed by M. T. Anderson – A terrifying vision of the future in an award-winning young adult novel

Feed tells the tale of Titus and his friends, six teenagers who hang out and party together. Like a majority of their fellow citizens—those who can afford the cost—they access all their news, advertising, education, games, “m-chat,” and money through implants in their brains—not just embedded chips but multipurpose devices that are fully integrated into their nervous systems.

Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler – Does technology promise humanity a bright future? 

Though Diamandis’ focus is squarely on the exponential growth in speed, capability, and spread of information processing technologies, he is not a gadget freak. He recognizes the social and political context in which technology is brought to light, although he may downplay the ferocity of humanity’s innate resistance to change.

Thinking Machines: The Quest for Artificial Intelligence and Where It's Taking Us Next by Luke Dormehl – Will robots run amok?

British science journalist Luke Dormehl delves deeply into the past, present, and future of humankind’s attempts to create machines capable of learning and decision-making on their own. His book serves up the background readers need to understand why such luminaries as Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have warned us that AI poses a grave threat to our future as a species—while others including Ray Kurzweil, a pioneer in the field, predict a new Golden Age.

Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future by Martin Ford – Will robots create a jobless future?

The emerging application of robotics poses a real threat to the future wellbeing of our country and the world. In Rise of the Robots, Silicon Valley software developer Martin Ford lays out the case for that claim in a balanced and temperate way that’s all the scarier as a result. If you’re tempted to think that this threat will emerge only in the distant future, think again.

Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It by Marc Goodman – Future Crimes: the harsh truth about cyber security

Already, the car you drive may have as many as fifty microprocessors embedded within it. If your home becomes a smarthome, with all lights, locks, heating, cooling, and appliances controllable through a handheld device, your life will truly become vulnerable to malware (viruses, Trojans, and worms) as well as the predations of an identity thief or some other variety of Internet crook.

The Fear Index by Robert Harris – A taut thriller about the world of multibillion-dollar hedge funds

An extraordinarily brilliant and eccentric American physicist enters into a partnership with an English financier to form a hedge fund based on the scientist’s evolving AI research. The fund quickly grows to multibillion-dollar proportions because of the accuracy of the securities-trading algorithms developed by the physicist and his band of eccentric young mathematical researchers. What happens next isn’t pretty.

This Perfect Day by Ira Levin – A superb tale of a future where artificial intelligence rules

Centuries in the future, the people of Earth live under the control of an artificial intelligence called UniComp. The result is a worldwide society free of war, hunger, crime, and violence of any sort. “Hate” and “fight” are swear words. This is the totalitarian society Ira Levin describes in his superb science fiction novel.

Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots by John Markoff – Will robots seize the day?

Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times technology and science reporter John Markoff asserts: “just as personal computing and the Internet have transformed the world during the past four decades, artificial intelligence and robotics will have an even larger impact during the next several.” However, Markoff is unclear what that impact will be.

Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think by Viktor Mayer-Schoeneberger and Kenneth Cukier – From two experts: The coming Big Data revolution

“At its core big data is about predictions. Though it is described as part of the branch of computer science called artificial intelligence, and more specifically, an area called machine learning, this characterization is misleading. Big data is not about trying to ‘teach’ a computer to ‘think’ like humans. Instead, it’s about applying math to huge quantities of data in order to infer probabilities: the likelihood that an email message is spam; that the typed letters ‘teh’ are supposed to be ‘the’; that the trajectory and velocity of a person jaywalking mean he’ll make it across the street in time [so that] the self-driving car need only slow slightly.” And what other than an intelligent machine could possibly accomplish this?

Nexus (Nexus Trilogy #1) by Ramez Naam – The post-human future explored in an outstanding SF novel

Will the transformation of humanity by artificial intelligence stop when computers begin to exceed the cognitive abilities of human beings? Is there a step far beyond into post-human abilities so far superior to those of humans today that a new species will result? This is the premise of computer scientist Ramez Naam’s brilliant SF trilogy. Nexus, the first of the three books, portrays the impact of the development and spread of a drug called Nexus 5 that endows its users with transhuman abilities, including telepathic communication with other users. The novel revolves around the fierce and violent resistance of both the American and Chinese governments. The two countries have led the rest of the world to ban the drug's use and imprison anyone found to be using it (including babies born with it in their systems. Crux, the second book, focuses on the life-and-death struggle of Nexus' creators to evade capture and inevitable torture and death at the hands of governments desperate to stamp out its use. In Apex, the final volume, war between human and posthuman breaks out and comes within a hair's breadth of forever destroying human civilization.

Autonomous by Annalee Newitz – In 2144, Arctic resorts, autonomous robots, and killer drugs

In Annalee Newitz’s brilliant science fiction novel, robots may take on an unlimited variety of shapes, sizes, and forms. Biobots closely resemble humans and include both biological and manufactured materials. Other robots, only vaguely humanoid, possess human brains to supplement their cybernetic capabilities. Yet others may be configured as insects, birds, or machines. A cybernetic soldier named Paladin is much more than a military machine: it communicates both wirelessly and by vocalizing, it is curious and continuously absorbs new information—and it hopes to gain its freedom from indenture and join the ranks of autonomous robots.

After Atlas (Planetfall, A) by Emma Newman – A 22nd century police procedural in a fascinating future Earth

British science fiction author Emma Newman paints a picture of a world you or I wouldn’t want to live in. Virtually everyone is “chipped” with implants in their brains that connect them to the world around them—and make them vulnerable to their bosses or public authorities. Many of the most talented people are enslaved in decades-long contracts resembling what was once called indentured servitude.

Absence of Mind by H.C.H. Ritz – In an unusually original sci-fi technothriller, technology meets neuroscience

In the near future, most people have implanted communication devices that allow them to communicate telepathically as well as by using their voices. A psychiatric nurse at Atlanta’s largest hospital encounters a baffling neurological pandemic that is flooding the city’s hospitals with “aggressive and paranoid people.” The nurse investigates this curious epidemic, fearing a connection to the device she has in her head.

Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut – Kurt Vonnegut's warning about automation

A sprawling automated factory in the town of Ilium, New York, produces a multitude of products, as determined by EPICAC XIV, the computer that manages the country's economy with nominal human supervision. It’s one of a number of such facilities, all integrated into the economic machine that supplies everything anyone in the U.S. might need to live comfortably. The problem is that machines have displaced people from virtually all the jobs.”

Amped by Daniel H. Wilson – Want to buy a brain implant? Think twice

Amped ventures into the near future to depict American society in upheaval over the brain implants installed in half a million of its least fortunate citizens. The implants “amplify” the brains of the elderly and infirm, accident victims, and those with severe mental illness and mental retardation, allowing them to focus clearly and to make the most efficient use possible of their bodies. These “amps” are smarter, quicker, and stronger than the average bear—and the vast majority of Americans don’t like it one bit.

Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson – Outstanding speculative novel about one possible future

If you’re imagining ranks of humanoid robots marching in lockstep as they trample on humanity and all else that we’ve created, you’re on the wrong track. This is a science fiction novel, to be sure, and as the title suggests it depicts an apocalyptic future, but it’s a future with a difference. This is a treatment of robots and automation from an entirely different perspective—and it’s written by a robotics scientist. It’s engaging. And it’s very, very scary.

If these books about artificial intelligence intrigue you, you might also be interested in 18 excellent recent sci-fi novels, A brief look at 15 notable dystopian scenarios, or Science history and science explained in 37 excellent popular books.