Bitcoin could be headed for $230,000 in less than a decade. Here are seven ways to value the crypto.

Bitcoin could be headed for $230,000 in less than a decade. Here are seven ways to value the crypto.. Here’s the essential reading list to make sense of it allIt’s a chaotic time in an industry that’s reshaping our lives – Guardian reporters and experts recommend the books that help explain how we got here, and where we’re headingHave you been feeling trapped in an endless cycle of artificial intelligence hype and panic?

What happened

John Laforge, of Ned Davis Research, said network adoption is the best way of assessing the cryptocurrency’s worth. Last week, another AI company employee publicly resigned, warning the technology “could kill us all by the end of the decade”. Thankfully, the Guardian’s tech reporters – and a few other tech experts we respect – are here to help. While the book is useful as a way of understanding the evolution of arguments about how a superintelligent AI might doom society, it’s worth noting that the author is a controversial Swedish-born philosopher who was forced to apologize in 2023 for a decades-old email in which he claimed “Blacks are more stupid than whites” and used the N-word.

Astonishingly, Henry Kissinger, the former US secretary of state who died in 2023, co-authored a bestselling 2024 book on AI with a billionaire former Google CEO, a less-wealthy former Microsoft executive, and a young lawyer who worked as Kissinger’s researcher. It includes rambling attacks on the Palestinian American academic Edward Said, and goes further than Kissinger and his co-authors by more or less calling for turning tech leaders into philosopher kings. Skip to main contentSkip to navigation The books in our list aim to explain and critique the AI industry and provide deeper political and social context to the AI moment.

The wider picture

Illustration: Kittipong Jirasukhanont/AlamyFeeling overwhelmed by the AI doom loop? It’s a chaotic time to make sense of the industry that’s reshaping our lives, whether or not we like it. Despite these dire warnings, AI companies have seen “otherworldly” surges in revenue and driven the US stock markets to new highs as they continue to push AI tools into everything from public school classrooms to law enforcement agencies, as well as rushing to put up new datacenters across the country.

We’ve compiled an essential reading list of smart books that explain and critique the AI industry; books that, while flawed, illustrate key viewpoints in the AI debates; and a few books that provide deeper political and social context, including some works of speculative fiction. The best books on the AI industryEmpire of AI – Karen HaoThe most intensively reported book on the AI industry so far, Empire of AI covers the rise of OpenAI, as well as the formation of Anthropic and OpenAI chief Sam Altman’s split with Elon Musk.

Parts of the book can feel a bit inside baseball, but the reporting is great and shows how the key American AI companies brought us to this point. Some early reviews of the book in 2025 suggested Hao’s take on the industry was overly negative: she has since been entirely vindicated. Project Maven – Katrina MansonAn in-depth look at how the US military and Palantir worked together to build autonomous weapons and surveillance systems that are an actual catastrophic threat – not an imagined one.

What has been reported

Hyperscale – Paris MarxFrom the journalist and host of the Tech Won’t Save Us podcast, this is a deep investigation into the physical impact of AI data centers around the world, and the toll they are taking on local communities and the global environment. Your Face Belongs to Us – Kashmir HillA bestselling book on the rise of Clearview AI, the facial recognition company that has provided sweeping surveillance powers to law enforcement, businesses and billionaires, by building a massive database of online images.

The AI Con – Emily M Bender and Alex HannaIn response to claims that AI will soon far surpass all human capabilities, and that the technology is advancing so quickly it’s on the verge of becoming a new life form, the authors of The AI Con have a simple response: “LOL” and “they wish”. These two tech critic academics argue that this kind of rhetoric is “AI hype” – lies and exaggerations that are helping rich people make more money “by justifying data theft, motivating surveillance capitalism, and devaluing human creativity”.

Flawed books on AI (that still might be worth reading)If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies – Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate SoaresIf you want to understand the perspective of the people panicking that AI will destroy humanity, this book is a good place to start. It’s a “doomer classic” that has been described as a book-length version of the tweet that made everyone freak out this past week. Unfortunately for readers, its predictions of doom are based more on grand thought experiments than on an engagement with how AI is currently playing out in the world.

The book “reads like a Scientology manual”, a New York Times reviewer wrote.

What happens next

For context, Yudkowsky’s other writings include a nearly 700,000-word work of Harry Potter fan fiction in which Harry applies the scientific method to magic. Superintelligence – Nick BostromThis 2014 book is one of the foundational AI texts for people like Elon Musk, who, alongside Bill Gates, has publicly praised the bestseller. In 2024, Oxford quietly shut down the academic institute he had run, and Bostrom resigned. Genesis: artificial intelligence, hope, and the human spirit – Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, Craig Mundie and Eleanor RundeAre you looking for AI insights from a man who faced frequent, wide-ranging and substantial allegations of war crimes?

The authors suggest that AI’s ability to provide swift answers without explaining how it got them might end our current “age of reason” and lead humanity back to a “pre-modern acceptance of unexplained authority”. They also raise the possibility that “the companies that own and develop AI will accrue totalizing social, economic, military and political power”, or that AI itself might become an all-powerful “philosopher king”. OpenAI’s ChatGPT listed this as one of the five best books on artificial intelligence.