Elon Musk's Reading List

"It’s sort of a futuristic version of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire . Let’s say you were at the peak of the Roman empire, what would you do, what action could you take, to minimise decline?"

"Reading The Culture series by Banks. Compelling picture of a grand, semi-utopian galactic future. Hopefully not too optimistic about AI."

"May be a cautionary tale, he is sort of an interesting fella."

"While on the subject of AI risk, Our Final Invention by James Barrat is also worth reading."

"Worth reading Superintelligence by Bostrom. We need to be super careful with AI. Potentially more dangerous than nukes."

"There is a good book on rocket stuff called Ignition! by John Clark, that’s a really fun one."

"Worth reading The Machine Stops , an old story by E.M. Forster."

"There’s a good book on structural design called Structures: Or Why Things Don’t Fall Down . It is really, really good if you want a primer on structural design."

"Read Lying , the new book by my friend Sam Harris. Excellent cover art and lots of good reasons not to lie!"

"I like Franklin’s biography by Isaacson, it’s really good. He was an entrepreneur, he started of nothing, just like a runaway kid. It was interesting to see how he is creating his business, then go to science and politics. I could say he is one of the people I most admire. Franklin is pretty awesome. He did what needed to be done at the time it needed to be done."

"Worth reading Merchants of Doubt . Same who tried to deny smoking deaths r denying climate change."

"My kids love The Lost Planet by Rachel Searles. Now on a rare second read!"

"Worth reading Life 3.0 by Tegmark. AI will be the best or worst thing ever for humanity, so let’s get it right."

"Peter Thiel has built multiple breakthrough companies, and Zero to One shows how."