How to Talk to AI

*Featured in BBC's Books to Read in 2026*Knowing how to speak to AI – and how not to – is a skill that everyone now needs. This book will help the reader understand how to make the most of these incredible new technologies, without succumbing to new powers of manipulation and control. Hundreds of millions of people now talk to AI like ChatGPT every day. They organise their finances and holidays, ask advice, seek therapy and find love – via machines. Almost overnight, chatbots are transforming society, politics and business.This is one of the biggest and fastest technological changes in history – but most people still don't really understand how AI works, how to make the most of it – or what the dangers are. As some people use it to turbo-charge their productivity at work, others are falling into dangerous conspiracies, delusions and psychosis.In How to Talk to AI, tech commentator Jamie Bartlett takes the reader inside the machine: showing how we can stay in control of our powerful new companions, even as they are changing the way we live, feel, and think.

Jamie Bartlett is one of the UK’s leading technology writers and thinkers. His previous books include The Dark Net and The People vs Tech, which was longlisted for the 2019 Orwell Prize for Political Writing. His Ted Talk about buying drugs on dark net markets has been watched nearly six million times. He has written and presented several hit BBC podcast series, including the smash hit The Missing Cryptoqueen, which reached number 1 in the podcast charts all round the world. In 2010, Jamie founded a research centre specialising in designing and applying artificial intelligence software to understand social trends.