AI Reading List: AI Safety
Below is a portion of my informal list of readings related to Artificial Intelligence (AI). This started out as a very short list created for use in conjunction with an academic presentation and has now grown much larger. Please let me know if you have any corrections, additions, suggestions, etc. It is very idiosyncratic and not meant to be comprehensive. Please feel free to share with others.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) Reading List, by Philip Rubin
AI Safety:
David E. Sanger, and Tim Balk. A.I. Gone Rogue? Trump Proposes Not New Rules but an ‘A.I. Force.’ The president proposed a follow-up to his Space Force but continued to dismiss worries about A.I.’s pace or potential for harm. The New York Times, September 19, 2026.
David E. Sanger, Jonathan Swan, Cecilia Kang, and Dustin Volz. Trump Calls A.I. Fears a Hoax. Inside the White House, the Debate Is More Complex. The president seems driven chiefly by the sense that A.I. is the way to economic growth, and nothing can be allowed to stand in its way. The New York Times, September 18, 2026.
Gary Marcus. Wake up, people. What we should actually fear, near term, is not so much rogue superintelligence as unleashed agentic AI causing hacking the internet at scale. Marcus on AI, September 18, 2026.
Hiroko Tabuchi. A.I. Boom Poses Growing Public Health Threat, Former E.P.A. Officials Warn. Air pollution from gas-fired power plants to run data centers is expected to add at least $20 billion in annual health care costs by 2028, the group warns. The New York Times, September 10, 2026.
Dustin Volz. Anthropic Says It Blocked Possible Efforts to Build Biological Weapons. In a new report, the A.I. start-up added that it could not determine whether the research was legitimate or nefarious, leading the company to shut down the work. The New York Times, September 10, 2026.
Bill Gates. The turbulent AI era is here. The choices we make now are critical. We need a plan to ensure that the good outweighs the bad. GatesNotes.com, August 25, 2026.
Jen Easterly. The Warning Lights Are Blinking Again. The New York Times, August 25, 2026.
Sheera Frenkel. A.I. Is Becoming So Powerful, It’s Stumping Those Trying to Contain It. Irregular, an Israeli start-up, worked with OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta to assess the security of their A.I. models. It made a mistake. Then the tests went off the rails. The New York Times, August 25, 2026.
Brian Uzzi and Julio M. Ottino. Self-driving Science: End-to-end AI-automated science undercuts trust, obscures responsibility, and restricts adaptivity. American Scientist, Vol. 114, Sep.-Oct. 2026.
Research Report. Companies think they control AI. The data show otherwise. The Atlantic, August, 2026.
George Lee and Ken Keyserling. When AI Learns How the World Works. Goldman Sachs, April 23, 2026.
Timothy Noah. How the Tech World Turned Evil. The New Republic, April 23, 2026.
Anil Seth. The Mythology Of Conscious AI. Why consciousness is more likely a property of life than of computation and why creating conscious, or even conscious-seeming AI, is a bad idea. Noema Magazine, Jan. 14, 2026
Eli Tan and Ryan Mac. Even the Sky May Not Be the Limit for A.I. Data Centers. Some tech leaders are concerned that the artificial intelligence race will exhaust available land and energy. The solution might lie in orbit. The New York Times, January 1, 2026.
Michelle Goldberg. An Anti-A.I. Movement Is Coming. Which Party Will Lead It?The New York Times, December 29, 2025.
Ken Bensinger. Who Pays When A.I. Is Wrong? New court cases seek to define content created by artificial intelligence as defamatory — a novel concept that has captivated some legal experts. The New York Times, November 12, 2025.
Joshua Rothman. Why the Godfather of A.I. Fears What He’s Built. The New Yorker, Nov. 13, 2023.
Steven Levy. The ‘Godfather of AI’ Has a Hopeful Plan for Keeping Future AI Friendly. Wired, August 11, 2023.
Kelsey Piper. AI experts are increasingly afraid of what they’re creating. Vox: The Highliight, Nov. 28, 2022.
Michael Spencer. Will Artificial Intelligence replace software developers? AI Supremacy, Sep. 30, 2022.
Michael Spencer. DeepMind and Oxford Researchers warn of Existential Dangers of A.I. AI Supremacy, Sep. 19, 2022.
Emile P. Torres. How AI could accidentally extinguish humankind. The Washington Post, Aug. 31, 2022.
Matthew Hutson. Measuring AI’s Carbon Footprint. IEEE Spectrum, June 26, 2022.
Angela Kane and Wendell Wallach. Is AI Upending Geopolitics? with Angela Kane. Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs: Artificial Intelligence & Equality Initiative podcast, June 22, 2022.
Prachi Patel. AI’s Benefit to Solar and Wind Power Isn’t Hot Air. IEEE Spectrum, June 20, 2022.
Tom Simonite. What Really Happened When Google Ousted Timnit Gebru. Wired, June 8, 2021.
Michael I. Jordan. Artificial Intelligence—The Revolution Hasn’t Happened Yet.Harvard Data Science Review, 1(1). Summer, 2019.
Wikipedia. Artificial Intelligence.
Wikipedia. Ethics of artificial intelligence.
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