Amy Webb, author of The Big Nine – How the Tech Titans & Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity, describes herself as a futurist, a job I wasn’t entirely sure actually existed outside of science fiction. Sure, plenty of people reason about the future and some do so in rigorous and quantitative fashion, but often in very narrow and specialized areas–predicting stock markets or elections or planning for consumer trends. Futurism strikes me as needing more of a generalist, and Webb seems to fit the bill. She takes the kind of broad view necessary to convey just how all-pervasive AI has already become and its potential for even greater influence. At the same time, she provides adequate detail and specificity in multiple domains so that all readers have something concrete they can relate to. Actually, the book reads like a blend of science fact and fiction as Webb tells us where we’ve been and imagines where we might go. So maybe futurist is something of a science fiction job after all.
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