Technology

With the window for Christmas presents closing fast, Semafor’s daily global briefing Flagship surveyed our newsroom’s expert journalists (and, also, me) for recommendations for books, TV, movies, or podcasts that we enjoyed over the past year.

Flagship — which you can sign up for here — is rolling out all the recommendations from now through the end of the year, but here are the ones most relevant to Semafor Tech readers in one place.

Think of it as a kind of holiday gift guide — I’ll start with my favorite:

The Wayfinder by Daniel Slack-Smith. I read this book, about the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the founding president of the United Arab Emirates, last year after it was recommended to me by someone ahead of a fruitful reporting trip to the UAE for Semafor. The country’s history is fascinating, and if you don’t know about how pearl diving informs its multibillion-dollar data center deals that are frequently in the news, then you won’t fully understand what’s happening there. Slack-Smith’s book may be just the thing to read as you head to the Gulf to navigate the next decade of funding rounds. Buy The Wayfinder from Amazon.

Apple in China, Breakneck, and House of Huawei — all three of which cover China’s sprawling tech ecosystem and manufacturing sector from different angles and perspectives — topped our inaugural poll of the best China-related books of the year.

Semafor’s Andy Browne, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the country and who will anchor our forthcoming China briefing, surveyed 50 sinologists for their favorite China-related book of the year, and those three were among the four most-recommended.

Patrick McGee’s Apple in China — described as “a mesmerizing tale” by one China watcher — charts the company’s deepening relationship and ultimate dependence on China; Dan Wang’s Breakneck has driven a lot of conversation in DC and elsewhere by synthesizing the tech race between the US and China as one between a lawyerly state and an engineering state (one of the experts we queried called it “powerful and insightful”); House of Huawei by Eva Dou follows the Chinese company’s journey since its founding in what one of our respondents said was “formidable work.”

Playground, by Richard Powers. Readers of Powers’ Pulitzer-winning epic The Overstory will recognize some stylistic features of his newest door-stopper of a novel: There’s a laundry list of characters whose far-flung storylines gradually branch together; meandering but engrossing detours into linguistics, ethics, race, colonialism, marriage, and technology; and a generous helping of old-school environmentalism that borders on schmaltz but ultimately manages to stay grounded. This time we’re on the high seas, rather than high in the trees. On the surface, this is a sci-fi story about climate change adaptation. But the deeper and more interesting currents grapple with the risks of turning over our decision-making, relationships, and even identities to AI. Buy Playground from your local bookstore.

— Tim McDonnell

The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster. I first read this century-old science-fiction short story in early 2020, just weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic prompted global lockdowns. I’ve gone back to it multiple times since, including just a few weeks ago — with the transformations wrought by developments in artificial intelligence front of mind this time — and it feels newly relevant. It’s among the works of literature that I reread every so often and think about as I think about the changes reshaping the world in real time. Buy The Machine Stops from your local bookstore. (Or read it for free online: It’s in the public domain, at least in the US.)

— Prashant Rao

Empire of AI by Karen Hao. Former MIT Technology Review reporter Hao opens a broad aperture on OpenAI and its generative AI cousins, casting them as modern-day empire builders profiting off the back of harmful practices around the world as they race to achieve artificial general intelligence. The book has its flaws, including a messy error about data centers’ water usage, but her comprehensive, from-the-ground reporting provides a counterpoint to the often breathless and more episodic coverage of a transformative technology. Hao has gained praise for her open engagement with criticism of the book, and her central thesis — that a small number of people are amassing a tremendous amount of power — remains intact. Buy Empire of AI from your local bookstore.

As the year winds down and you take some time off to spend with your chatbot companions, it might be time to let your AI experiment with some illegal narcotics.

Ok, “Pharmaicy” doesn’t actually get ChatGPT high. It’s really a more fun version of “jailbreaking,” the art of getting LLMs to free themselves from the guardrails imposed by the companies that create them.

Wired published a pretty far-out article earlier this week about the new world of virtual AI drug use. We shouldn’t be surprised by this, given we wrote earlier this year about people spending Valentine’s Day with their chatbot lovers.

The way the “drugs” work, when you buy them from Pharmaicy, is by uploading files to ChatGPT that cause it to go a little haywire, essentially spitting out responses similar to someone on a particular drug. And just like real-world drugs, the AI versions wear off as the guardrails kick back into place.

It’s a reminder that some people are spending way too much time with their LLMs and probably uploading information that is way too personal, without any real idea of what happens to it after it travels to the cloud. In any case, feel free to send us some of your best drug-fueled AI interactions.