The Financial Times has chosen the best business book of the year
25 December 2024 14:21
Bloomberg journalist Parmi Olson and her book Supremacy have won the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year awards. This was reported on the publication’s website, "Komersant Ukrainian" reports.
“Supremacy” describes the genesis of artificial intelligence pioneers and the rivalry between the “fathers” – the founders of OpenAI, Sam Altman and DeepMind, Demis Hasabis. The article also describes how, under pressure from influential backers such as Microsoft and Google, these startups are gradually drifting toward commercialization of their products.
In Supremacy, Parmi Olson explores in detail the tensions between the initial lofty ambitions for artificial intelligence to serve the world and the commercial pressures exerted by wealthy backers.
It is noted that this book is the fourth winner of the prize in the last five years, which deals with technology and the business, economic, social and geopolitical implications of the rapid development of this sector.
Parmi Olson received a cash prize of £30,000.
What other books were nominated for the prize
The Financial Times, one of the most influential business publications in the world, has been selecting the best business book of the year for 20 years in a row. This time, Financial Times journalists evaluated more than 600 texts. As a result, a long list of 16 titles was formed. And in September, the jury, which, in addition to FT editor Rula Khalaf, included representatives of Nikkei, Chicago Business School, Schroders, and Mozilla, selected the six best.
This list of finalists includes, among other things, studies of the impact of AI, the economics of tribal instincts, and the issue of longevity. Moreover, the books about Donald Trump’s finances and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates competed with Parmi Olson and her Supremacy until the end.
After Donald Trump’s victory in the US elections, the NYT’s investigation into his finances, The Happy Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success, attracted special attention. As the FT wrote about the book, “Russ Buettner and Suzanne Craig have gathered tax information and conducted dozens of interviews with sources to uncover the truth behind Trump’s claims that he has built a thriving multibillion-dollar business empire.”
Who has previously been recognized by the Financial Times
When selecting its award winners, the publication always tries to draw attention to the main trends in the global economy in a given period. Therefore, as Ekonomichna Pravda reminds us, in 2022, against the backdrop of the outbreak of a major war in Ukraine and the destruction of supply chains and the intensification of the geopolitical struggle between the United States and China for future technologies, the book “The War of the Chips” was quite expected to win.
However, the winner of 2023 surprised the world. Despite the general interest in the rapid development of artificial intelligence after the release of the ChatGPT chatbot, last year, for the first time since the award’s inception, a work on management won. It is the book The Right Kind of Wrong: What Learning from Failure Can Teach Us About Prosperity by Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson.
Nevertheless, AI remained in the focus of the Financial Times, and this year’s winner was the book by Bloomberg journalist Parmi Olson, “Superiority: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race to Change the World.”
