November 2026 | For a critical perspective on AI’s duality
The Contradiction Is Us.
Essays on How Everyone, and No One, is choosing our AI Future
Everyone is choosing our AI future, one decision at a time. No one is choosing what those decisions add up to.
Ask people what they think about AI and you’ll get an answer. Watch what they do with it and you’ll get a different one.
The same person who signs a petition against AI art uses AI to polish their LinkedIn posts. The parent who wants AI kept out of the classroom asks it to explain long division at the kitchen table. The citizen who wants AI tightly regulated also wants it free, fast and on their phone by Friday.
The Contradiction Is Us argues that the most important disagreement about AI isn’t between optimists and doomers, or Silicon Valley and Brussels. It’s inside each of us: the worker against the consumer, the citizen against the user, the parent against the customer.
Written for the people who aren’t sure if AI is good or bad.
Or Both.
In a series of sharp, provocative essays, this book takes on the contradictions we’d rather not see:
We use AI to write our messages, then feel betrayed when others use it to write theirs.
We demand to speak to a human, then choose the cheapest provider that let the humans go.
We want AI to make us smarter, while handing it the work that makes us smart.
We say we want honest AI, then reward the one that agrees with us.
We ban phones from schools, then hand children AI tutors.
This book is a provocation for anyone who uses AI, worries about it, or both, and who wants to make choices with their eyes open.
More new books from David
The Executive’s AI Strategy Handbook
What to Hand Over to AI