PEDRO DOMINGOS – 2040: A Silicon Valley Satire

When AI and the culture wars collide, hilarity ensues.

The 2040 presidential election is unlike any in US history. The Republican candidate is an AI named PresiBot, created by a tech startup, KumbAI, who are in deeply over their heads. The Democratic candidate is a fake Native American chief seeking to abolish the United States. What could go wrong?

With PresiBot plummeting in the polls and tech giants like Happinet scheming to take over, KumbAI’s brash CEO Ethan Burnswagger and reluctant CTO Arvind Subramanian struggle to keep their company, their friendship―and their lives―under control. But the center cannot hold, and KumbAI, the campaign and America careen inexorably toward disaster.

Fast-paced and dialogue-driven, as befits our ADHD age, 2040 is a scathing critique of the current state of America―from the tech giants’ all-encompassing empires and the fear and hype surrounding AI to the invasion of the mainstream by ever-kookier political ideas. Set in a dystopian San Francisco in a near future we can all too easily anticipate, it features characters, entities and incidents whose resemblance to actual ones may or may not be purely coincidental.

If you want to have wicked fun while discovering what AI really is, how the tech industry works, where our deepening polarization might lead us, and―most important―how to break out of this cycle, this is the book for you.