Episode · Lenny's Podcast · 2026-10-18

Lenny Rachitsky & Emmanuel Ameisen: books mentioned on Lenny's Podcast

Inside the black box of AI: How AI models actually think | Emmanuel Ameisen (Anthropic)

4 books · With Emmanuel Ameisen · Listen · Watch on YouTube

Emmanuel Ameisen is an interpretability researcher at Anthropic, where he looks inside LLMs like Claude to understand how they think. Before joining Anthropic, he spent years in applied ML at Stripe and Insight, and is the author of Building Machine Learning Powered Applications.

Lenny Rachitsky discussed Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Emmanuel Ameisen recommended A Brief History of Intelligence by Max Bennett, Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang, and Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman.

Books mentioned, in the order they came up

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1. 

   Thinking, Fast and Slow

   Daniel Kahneman · at 1:01:14

   Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman is a landmark exploration of human psychology that contrasts the intuitive, emotional system one mind with the deliberate, logical system two mind to explain cognitive biases and errors in judgment.

   Discussed

   “And the system one system two stuff is basically Kahneman's kind of I have that book up there actually behind me. This system one just to keep it simple is just like your kind of your amygdala-limbic system making just like gut level quick decisions like snake oh no.”

   Lenny Rachitsky Inside the black box of AI: How AI models actually think | Emmanuel Am… 2026-10-18 Listen at 1:01:14

   Where to get it

   Listen free with an Audible trialAmazon
2. 

   A Brief History of Intelligence

   Max Bennett · at 1:05:07

   A Brief History of Intelligence by Max Bennett is an accessible book that explores the evolution of brains and the key moments that built complex neural systems.

   Recommended

   “One I read recently and is A Brief History of Intelligence. Uh it's this really cool book that walks through the history of like basically brains and five key moments in in our evolution that sort of bootstraps these brain systems on top of one another. It's super accessible”

   Emmanuel Ameisen Inside the black box of AI: How AI models actually think | Emmanuel Am… 2026-10-18 Listen at 1:05:07

   Where to get it

   Listen free with an Audible trialAmazon
3. 

   Stories of Your Life and Others

   Ted Chiang · at 1:05:32

   Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang is a critically acclaimed collection of speculative short stories that explore complex philosophical, linguistic, and scientific themes.

   Recommended

   “Uh another one is Story of Your Life and Others. This is Ted Chiang. This is maybe my favorite sci-fi book of all time. It's a bunch of short stories. It does what I think is the the like high art version of sci-fi”

   Emmanuel Ameisen Inside the black box of AI: How AI models actually think | Emmanuel Am… 2026-10-18 Listen at 1:05:32

   Where to get it

   Listen free with an Audible trialAmazon
4. 

   Four Thousand Weeks

   Oliver Burkeman · at 1:07:43

   Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman is a counterintuitive time management book that reframes human productivity around the radical acceptance of finitude, arguing that trying to conquer every task is impossible and that true meaning comes from embracing our limited time.

   Recommended

   “There's like one non-fiction book that really is like one of my favorite ever. It's 4,000 weeks. Um it has a lot in it that that I think is cool. Uh one of the cool things is a sort of thing that was really relevant to me, which is that like the when I finally mentality is a common mentality”

   Emmanuel Ameisen Inside the black box of AI: How AI models actually think | Emmanuel Am… 2026-10-18 Listen at 1:07:43

   Where to get it

   Listen free with an Audible trialAmazon