BONUS | 7 Books AI Can't Replace

In this bonus episode, Ryan shares seven books that will help you think more clearly, use AI wisely, and become harder to replace. 🎥 WATCH THIS EPISODE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeBuZjNq8u0 | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeBuZjNq8u0 📚 Check out the books mentioned in this episode at Ryan's bookstore, The Painted Porch: https://www.thepaintedporch.com/ 👉 Sign up for Ryan’s free monthly reading list https://ryanholiday.net/reading-list/newsletter: https://ryanholiday.net/reading-list/ 🎟️ DAILY STOIC LIVE https://www.dailystoiclive.com/| Ryan Holiday is coming to a city near you https://www.dailystoiclive.com/! Grab tickets here https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ | https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ 🎙️ AD-FREE https://dailystoic.supercast.com/| Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing to The Daily Stoic Premium https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content: https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ ✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues: courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

• 0:15Ryan Holiday?

  If you're worried about AI, if you're worried about being replaced, if you're worried about people's brains breaking, these are some books that will help you not just understand the world of AI, but actually thrive in it. I think we should start with

• 0:30Ryan Holiday?

  Austin Kleon's stuff. So first off, his book, Steal Like an Artist, is incredible. AI is of all these influences, takes from everyone, but it doesn't ultimately have a point of view. It doesn't have anything to say. It is not actually greater than the sum of its parts, but human beings can be. So I think this is a great book on creativity. But then also, the point of creative work is not just the product, it's the process. It's being the person who did the thing. That's what people don't... Yes, you can have AI write an essay for you. The point is not to have the product. The point is to be the person that did the thing, that learned the thing along the way. And to me, that's a lot of what show your work is about. If you've done this long enough, you understand technological trends come and go. It always feels like this is a pivotal moment. This is a rock bottom moment.

• 1:15Ryan Holiday?

  Everything's falling apart, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Keep going, keep doing your work. And then his new one, Don't Call It Art, is really good. Because again, the point of creativity is to be creative. Robert Caro is maybe the greatest biographer of all time, and his philosophy of turning every page, doing the work. You cannot create the Lyndon Johnson series or the Power Broker with AI. There's too many connections, too much synthesis, too much human interaction. The interviews, he went and he lived in the hill country. There's this German word, Fingerspätigung, which means a fingertip feel. You have to do the work to create great work. You have to be connected to the work to do great work. I'm not saying that there aren't ways AI can help you. I'll give you a good recommendation on that. But ultimately, Robert Caro's stuff on doing the work

• 2:00Ryan Holiday?

  is absolutely essential. I like Daily Rituals, that's another good one. And then The Notebook. Again, the history of doing it on paper, doing the work, is really, really important.

• 2:13Ryan Holiday?

  This is written by the Pope, Bob from Chicago, if you will. This is his encyclical about AI. If you've heard about it in the news, maybe you think he's anti or opposed to AI. That's not actually what he's talking about. He's talking about technology in a way that I don't think we talk about it enough, which is the moral implications of the technologies. He has this device between like, are we building a Tower of Babel or a Mamian Wall? Which is both references that I hadn't totally understood. This is a great book, everyone should read this. I'm not actually anti-AI. I use it for things we talk about in our staff meetings. How can we be more effective? How can it make this more efficient? What can it help us do that we're not capable of doing? I like Ethan Mullet's book, Co-Intelligence, which is about how do you use machines not to replace tasks, but to make you better at tasks?

• 2:56Ryan Holiday?

  Right? He talks about AI being about as good as your worst human. So is AI better than my editor? No, but is it better than a bad editor that I can work with again and again and again at 2:00 in the morning? Sure, it can help teach you things, point you to things, help you find obvious things that maybe would have been inefficient to have a human do. So I think this book is good. Two books, but one thing. And then, I don't think it's here, but Average is Over by Tyler Cowen. I think one of the things AI is going to do is make middling or average results and performance much less valuable. So what I think you want to be thinking about is what are the things that only you, as a human being, can do? That's what you want to focus on. That's what you want to specialize in. That's where you want to stand out.

• 3:40Ryan Holiday?

  The humanity of it is going to be really important.

• 3:44Ryan Holiday?

  So I think The One Thing and Average is Over is really good. Okay, I would also recommend Rene Duresta's book, Invisible Rulers. AI is really good at stuff. It's also really good at making shit up. It hallucinates all the time, gives you bullshit. If you don't have a good bullshit detector, you're going to be in trouble. This is, I think, a book that will help you spot slop, help you spot spam, help you spot influence campaigns. You're going to need a good bullshit detector. Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman is also really important because you are just inherently susceptible to bullshit. You have cognitive biases, you have vulnerabilities. And if you don't have any kind of self-awareness, if you can't be critical, you're going to have trouble. I guess I would also then probably give you the Stoics

• 4:30Ryan Holiday?

  in this regard, right? Epictetus, first and foremost. Epictetus is talking about putting every impression, every thought, every opinion to the test. The rationality of Stoicism, I think, is going to be particularly important in this era. And I think everyone should read it. And then I guess what I would say is, any book is a good recommendation in a world of AI because people are not reading, people are having AI do summaries for them. Anytime you are sitting down, disconnected from a screen, thinking deeply about an idea, thinking deeply about a timeless idea, you are keeping your brain going. You are developing your critical thinking skills. You are setting yourself apart from the people that are not doing that work. If you want more book recommendations, I send these out in my reading list newsletter, which I've sent out every month for 15 years.

• 5:15Ryan Holiday?

  And you can sign up at ryanholiday.net/readinglist.