Many of the metals needed for semiconductors are mined at great human and environmental cost.Credit: Beawiharta/Reuters It determines what we read and buy, whether we get a job, loan, mortgage, subsidies or parole. Two new books offer complementary visions of how society is being reshaped by those who build, use and manage AI. In The Alignment Problem, writer Brian Christian gives an intimate view of the people making AI technology -- their aims, expectations, hopes, challenges and desolations. Starting with Walter Pitts's work on a logical representation of neuron activity in the early twentieth century, he recounts the ideas, aims, successes and failures of researchers and practitioners in fields from cognitive science to engineering. Atlas of AI, from the influential scholar Kate Crawford, deals with how, practically, AI gets into and plays out in our lives.