This summer while intermittently ruminating about artificial intelligence (and avoiding exploring some of my thoughts about generative AI and higher education in the humanities), a reoccurring question has surfaced with two variants. They go something like this: What type of future do the boosters for AI want to create? What kind of world will we have if the Peter Thiels, Elon Musks, Sam Altmans,and others realize their vision?
The next thought is usually something on the order of, “I should create a reading list that includes outside observers and as well as first-hand sources from the key players themselves.”
Then, I have inevitably moved on to something else.
Yesterday I was intrigued to read that in her August 3, 2026 New York Times column (gift link) Tressie McMillan Cottom offers readers just such a list for understanding big tech and politics. In establishing the stakes of our current moment and explaining why investing some time to understand it is worthwhile, Cottom writes,
“Artificial intelligence is not just a market product or a scientific achievement. It is a political theory. And it is gobbling up our democracy….Put simply, there is too much money, some of it too untraceable, giving a small group of unelected people too much power over the people. That’s data politics.”
The only book on Cottom’s list that I’ve previously read is Karen Hao’s deeply reported Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI. If I were to add just one more title it might be Jathan Sadowski’s The Mechanic and the Luddite.
After reading the column, I ordered Muskism: A Guided for the Perplexed as the next step toward working through the list.
michaelrosenow.com 