2018 is here! It’s time to take stock of what’s new and what’s next. Here are 5 book recommendations which will answers those questions and inspire you to learn something new. Enjoy!

Home Deus by Yuval Noah Harari

After his smash hit Sapiens, Harari went a step further with Homo Deus where he explains how we came to be the planet’s dominant species and uncovers a prediction for the future of humanity.

In it he reveals how science and technology will eventually make humans subservient to computer algorithms.

Heart of the Machine: Our Future in a World of Artificial Emotional Intelligence, by Richard Yonck

There are many benefits to instilling emotions to computers, but there are also drawbacks. Automation anxiety has existed since the word computing first begun being used. Emotion recognition could lead to advanced surveillance, and the same technology that can manipulate our feelings could become a method of mass control.

Heart and The Machine is an exploration into how we’ll interact with computers that can understand our emotions.

Affective Computing (MIT Press), by Dr. Rosalind Picard

The latest scientific findings indicate that emotions play an essential role in decision making, perception, learning, and more—that is, they influence the very mechanisms of rational thinking. Not only too much, but too little emotion can impair decision making. According to Rosalind Picard, if we want computers to be genuinely intelligent and to interact naturally with us, we must give computers the ability to recognize, understand, even to have and express emotions.

How emotions are made by Lisa Feldman

Why do emotions feel automatic? Does rational thought really control emotion? How does emotion affect disease? How can you make your children more emotionally intelligent?

Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman took a deep look into emotions and developed a new theory of how the brain constructs emotions that could revolutionize psychology, health care, the legal system, and our understanding of the human mind.

Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing our Digital Future, Andrew McAfee & Eric Brynjolfsson

We live in strange times. A machine plays the strategy game Go better than any human, which begs to ask:What will business technology look like tomorrow?

In their new book Andrew McAfee and Eric Brynjolfsson explore how we can build a future that doesn’t leave humans behind.

What books are you looking forward to read in 2018?

Originally posted on the Vibetek blog.