“A fascinating survey of the known spectrum of human biases that get in our way of thinking through things, even when we convince ourselves we have.”
-The New York Times Book Review
“A salutary effect of growing disillusionment with tech has been a shelf of excellent critiques. But The Loop is a strong entry in the canon…AI represents perhaps the ultimate shiny object. But Ward penetrates to the dark vacancy at its core.”
-The San Francisco Chronicle
The Loop: How Technology is Creating a World Without Choices and How to Fight Back is my first book, a wide-ranging look at the ways artificial intelligence is beginning to curate our choices for us, and how capitalism packages those choices for our unconscious acceptance. Drawing on interviews with over 100 scientists and 10-years of front-line reporting from the cutting edge of behavior-shaping technology, the book is a warning about our growing reliance on AI, and an encouragement to protect the best parts of being human.
From 2018-2024 I was technology correspondent for NBC News, based in the San Francisco Bay Area. I’ve been a Berggruen Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS), and a lecturer at the Stanford d.School. Before my career in television I was editor-in-chief of Popular Science.
Jacob Ward 