Over the whole of August, my social media timeline has been beset by a deluge of proclamations and warnings following the breach of Hugging Face's internal systems by hundreds of OpenAI's own autonomous AI agents. During an internal evaluation, many of these agents — set impossible tasks and barely supervised — spontaneously coordinated to cheat their scorer and broke into Hugging Face as a by-product of the scheme. The incident, besides setting the technology world alight, triggered a bewilderingly contrasting set of views. The learned and the lay alike have been agog, issuing solicited opinions and unsolicited rants that range from a severe chastising of our tendency to anthropomorphize AI, to the bemoaning of warnings that signal a coming apocalypse. Coincidentally, August has also been the month in which I have been occupied with award-winning technology journalist Kevin Roose's forthcoming book, The AGI Chronicles. The AGI Chronicles is the culmination of innumerable interviews the author conducted with key protagonists at the three most prominent frontier companies — OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google/Alphabet. Roose reveals a breathtaking concoction of ingenuity, indifference, and hubris dominating the unhinged race toward the ultimate Holy Grail of information technology: Artificial General Intelligence. The motives, by Roose’s own account, are as varied as the personalities pursuing them. Dario Amodei of Anthropic is driven by the determination to prevent an AI catastrophe; Sam Altman, by the fear that Google might reach machine superintelligence first; the Nobel laureate Demis Hassabis, then CEO of Google DeepMind, by a dream of AGI unpacking the scientific mysteries that have eluded the finest human minds. A paper titled "Attention Is All You Need," published by Google in 2017 (its title playfully echoing the Beatles' "All You Need Is Love"), sent the legendary OpenAI researcher Ilya Sutskever into a positive tizzy — and, in Roose's telling, signalled the beginning of the race to AGI. Sutskever, a man given to dropping into handstands as a method of cracking stubborn problems, grasped the immense potential of the transformer architecture the paper described, and began feeding text into neural networks to extract patterns and meaning. By 2022, Roose writes, the race had birthed three distinct tribes of believers: scientists, seekers, and survivalists. The scientists, like Hassabis, viewed AGI through the lens of pure technical challenge. The seekers, led by Altman, believed in its potential to revolutionise life itself. And the survivalists, like Dario Amodei, fretted and fumed over the misalignment between capability and safety — an indiscretion with the potential to lead to irreversible catastrophe. Such concerns eventually led Amodei, himself a former OpenAI researcher, to leave and co-found Anthropic.
Ultra Real Food: Quit Processed Food and Take Back Your Health – Courtney Swan
Integrative nutritionist and host of the Realfoodology podcast, Courtney Swan renders yeoman service with her latest book, Ultra Real Food. A manifesto for healthy eating, a checklist for prudent choice, and a rebellion against what she calls the impunity of corporate "Big Ag", Ultra Real Food succeeds admirably in weaning the reader away from the lure of the standard American diet ("SAD"). The enthusiasm, exasperation, energy, and erudition of Ms. Swan find complete and uninhibited expressions on every page. Ultra Real Food is replete with practical and implementable wisdom: food hacks, shortcuts to decode the seemingly esoteric jargon on product packaging, and pathways to sustainable procurement that benefit both the environment and small farmers. Armed with Ms. Swan's tricks for resisting the relentless, concerted onslaught of the ultra-processed-food purveyors, the reader finds in her book a handmaiden to healthy living and beneficial eating. In this age of abundance, an innocent shopper making her rounds of the supermarket aisle may find herself not merely inundated by choice but bewildered by the innumerable ingredients printed on the packaging. Ms. Swan informs her readers that there are at least sixty-one — yes, sixty-one — different names for sugar on food labels. Do you recognise any of these: high-fructose corn syrup, invert sugar, muscovado, turbinado…?
WHERE ARE THE KINGS – DONAL RYAN
Novelist and playwright, Sebastian Barry calls Donal Ryan "the king of the new wave of Irish writers" — and here Ryan pulls another rabbit from his glittering hat. Bleak, dark, deceptive, and beguiling, Where Are the Kings delivers a sledgehammer blow to its unsuspecting reader. As the covers close, it is time to draw a deep breath and contemplate, in silence, a plot that is not merely ingenious but deeply penetrating. A bildungsroman, the book follows the tumultuous journey of young Jack in three arresting acts: tempus edax ("time the devourer of things"), tempus fugit ("the flight of time"), and tempus imperator ("time the ruler"). On the cusp of adolescence, Jack is dealt a devastating blow when his mother, Grace, drowns herself. Unable to bear the consequences of his wife's death, Jack's father descends into mental chaos before being dispatched to an asylum in Limerick.
The Common Good Economy: A New Compass – Mariana Mazzucato
Prominent economist Mariana Mazzucato, in her latest book, proposes a set of five principles – terming them taken together as a ‘compass’ – which, according to her should characterise an economy. These principles are purpose and directionality, co-creation by citizens, collective learning, reward sharing, and accountability. Subsequent to the identification of the principles, the book dissects the merits and worth of each principle. The book begins with a historical journey tracing the philosophical origins of the common good. The works of Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, Thomas Hobbes etc. are alluded to before providing alternative challenges in the form of the communitarian visions of philosophers such as Micheal Sandel.
Keynes for Our Times – Robert Skidelsky
When it comes to interpreting the works and putting into perspective the words of one of the world's premier economists, John Maynard Keynes, the critical contributions and towering presence of Robert Skidelsky is almost an inevitability. In a carefully curated book of essays, the premier British economic historian and author, strives to answer what seems to be a simple, but in reality, a profoundly philosophical question, "How would Keynes address the crises plaguing the 21st century?" Skidelsky’s final book, before his passing on the 15th of April 2026, addresses various issues of socio-economic significance such as the scourge of the COVID 19 pandemic, the financial recession of 2008 contrived via the cohesive workings of avarice and hyper capitalism, and the untrammelled rise of capitalism. To be fair to both the book and its author, the book is not an apology for Keynesianism. In fact, in a riveting “intermezzo” to one of the Chapters, Skidelsky revisits the evergreen ‘Keynes v Hayek’ debate (a topic which the author addresses in detail in a separate book), in which Hayek is accorded a fair and equitable appreciation.
The Lost Soldiers – Andrey Kurkov
The most celebrated Ukrainian author in contemporary history, and a veritable master of absurdism, is back with an absolute bang! Lost Soldiers bears the Kurkov imprimatur with such exquisiteness so as to leave the reader revelling in the essence of the book long after the covers have come down upon it. At the nub of the plot is the inexplicable and fantastical disappearance of an entire squad of Red Army soldiers (the novel itself is squarely placed in the tumultuous ‘Kyvian’ times of the Bolsheviks and White Army confrontations) from a bathhouse situated in the bustling Halytska Square. The responsibility for solving the case falls upon Samson Kolechko, a young and optimistic investigator who calls the Lybid police station, home.
Let Your Body Do the Work: Activate Your Naturally Occurring Weight Loss Hormones for Long-Term Health – Dr. Anette Sams
Dr. Sam’s book, published in a pivotal age where the concept of weight loss has transcended educated conversations to move into realms that are equally encouraging, and fantastical, optimistic, and delusional, provides a beacon of clarity. Exhorting readers to heed the signal and not the noise, it eggs them on to concentrate on one uncompromising and naturally unparalleled phenomenon – the human body’s magisterial capability to heal itself, when bereft of unwarranted interventions.
The Knot: problems can be solved – Seth Godin
An inimitable feature binding every Seth Godin book is the unravelling of intractable problems using startlingly simple solutions and fundamental ideas. The Knot: problems can be solved (the knot) is no exception to the norm. There are numerous occasions in life where we find ourselves in a frustrating bind unable to decide amongst competing choices and contradictory alternatives. How do we then extricate ourselves from such entanglements? Godin’s slim book (has there ever been a Godin book that is otherwise?) begins with a riveting story involving Alexander the Great (before he became great that is). Riding into a small city in Central Turkey, Alexander is intrigued by the sight of an ox tied to a post with a complicated knot. Apocrypha held that many tried, but in vain to untie the knot. Whoever succeeded would become great, according to a prevailing legend. Alexander approached the rope and completely ignoring the knot, pulled out a pin at the centre, and instantly understanding the entanglements. From then on, the matter of untying the knot became a rudimentary chore.
Stop Dead – Katrín Júlíusdóttir
The world owes a huge debt of gratitude to Katrín Júlíusdóttir for abdicating a thriving political career and instead assume the profession of penning mystery novels. Since leaving politics in 2016, the former Minister of Finance and Economy in Iceland, has admirably reinvented herself as an author of prominence. Her latest book, Stop Dead is not exception to the norm. A racy thriller set in some of the bleak and windswept remote corners of Iceland, Stop Dead is a one sitting breathless read.
SISYPHUS
(Photo by Vicky Sim on Unsplash) Big obstinate stonesDoes not reduce the load weight.But makes you stronger.