Work
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Written with world-renowned expert Daniela Rus of MIT, this book is designed to help you understand how AI really works, what we should be excited about, what we have to fear, and what we might be able to do to ensure the safe and responsible use of AI. The book has been featured in Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and Natural History.
Selected for the prestigious JP Morgan NextList2025.
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My first collaboration with Daniela Rus, Director of MIT’s legendary Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, which is kind of like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, but with robots. We spent every Monday for almost two years talking about her work and the good and bad of how AI and robotics could change the world.
The Heart and the Chip: Our Bright Future with Robots will help you see the world through the eyes of a roboticist - how many problems could be solved with intelligent machines. The third part analyzes the many dangers and risks, and how to mitigate them, and the first and second sections detail the promising potential and how it all works.
Chosen as one of the Best Books of 2024 by the Financial Times.
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After thinking about refocusing my newsletter on AI, I ran into the same old problem and started chasing new intellectual squirrels. So these will continue to be irregular essays about interesting topics. Some examples, if you’d like to read before subscribing:
Annual Letter to Imaginary Investors
The title of the newsletter is a reference to the main character in my first novel. After landing a job at a startup during the 2000 dotcom boom, Edward finds himself with nothing to do and invents a position for himself as general analyst, or generalyst. Mostly, though, he cleans the company kitchen and thinks about cosmology. The newsletter is better than the book.
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For years I wanted to write an easy-to-understand book on the history of the universe, so I pitched a publisher, and they told me they loved the proposal, but that it would have to be written by a scientist. Dismayed, I shelved the idea. Then Neil deGrasse Tyson and his reps reached out, wondering if I’d be interested in helping him turn his own book on the cosmos into a story for younger readers. I ditched my project and dove right in. The result was translated into 15 languages and nominated for several major international prizes.
Grab a copy and understand the cosmos in just under five hours.
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As a former competitive swimmer, I'm against glorifying the sport of rowing, but then the Viking Press and author Daniel James Brown asked if I'd be interested in adapting his massive bestseller The Boys in the Boat. I can't resist a great narrative, and the resulting book is now in its 24th printing.
This project taught me about the primacy of the core story and how a great tale can take so many different shapes and forms. After this adaptation, I worked on books with Susan Cain, Bill Nye, and Neil deGrasse Tyson.
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My two pirate novels for younger readers, Sea of Gold and Sea of Gold: The Duke’s Curse, follow the adventures of a young treasure hunter who loves to swim and hates to fight.
The Jack and the Geniuses trilogy, written with Bill Nye the Science Guy, centers on three brilliant and curious siblings who use science and technology to solve mysteries.
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The Atlantis duology is set in a reimagined version of the undersea world — no merfolk, more technology.
My latest short story for adults, The Funniest Centaur Alive, was recently published in Issues. It’s about an inventor who develops an AI to improve his standup act, and a marketer who tests the technology for her conference presentation.
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If I could tell you about this, would I really be a good ghost? This is largely how I make a living as a writer, and I honestly love the work. If my wife actually had a secret trust fund, as I’d hoped, then I’d probably just be writing bad poems on a beach somewhere.
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