Canbury Press acquires new Stokel-Walker book on AI
Posted on October 18 2023
Canbury Press, the non-fiction book specialist, has acquired a book from the leading technology writer Chris Stokel-Walker about the imminent impact of artificial intelligence on our lives.
How AI Ate the World: The Rise of Artificial Intelligence – And What It Means for All of Us will be published in trade paperback in May 2024. Martin Hickman, Managing Director of Canbury Press, acquired world rights directly from the author.
Canbury Press published Stoke-Walker’s previous books YouTubers (2019) and TikTok Boom (2021) - the first popular history of TikTok, which has been reprinted three times. Rights to those titles have been sold to multiple territories, including the US, Japan, China, Korea, Brazil, and Turkey.
For How AI Ate the World, Stoke-Walker – who writes for the BBC, The Guardian and the New York Times – visited the laboratories of the Silicon Valley disruptors making rapid advances in ‘large language models’ of machine learning and discovered their grand plans for their products. He has also explored the ‘dark side’ of AI by speaking to workers who have lost their jobs to chatbots and to futurologists worried that we are creating a dangerous super-intelligence that could threaten humankind.
Martin Hickman, Managing Director of Canbury Press, said: “How AI Ate the World is the ultimate ‘start here’ guide for anyone who wants to know more about how AI will affect our lives. With his access to Silicon Valley insiders and popular touch, Chris has woven together a fast-paced, balanced narrative perfect for the general reader. Whether we like it or not, AI will be integrated into the technology that shapes, and increasingly runs, our lives: this indispensable book urgently sets out why that matters.”
Louisa Pritchard Associates represents Canbury Press for translation rights. George Lucas of Ink Well Management handles US rights.