FT, Standard Chartered Unveil 6-Book Award Shortlist as 3 AI Titles Dominate
Updated
Updated · Financial Times · Oct 6
FT, Standard Chartered Unveil 6-Book Award Shortlist as 3 AI Titles Dominate
1 articles · Updated · Financial Times · Oct 6
Summary
Six finalists were named for the 2026 FT and Standard Chartered Business Book of the Year Award, with three books centered on AI’s business, military and forecasting impact.
Roula Khalaf said the field showed unusual breadth, spanning AI, Ozempic’s rise, fossil-fuel damage and lessons from the first global financial crisis.
Liaquat Ahamed and Sebastian Mallaby — previous winners in 2009 and 2016 — returned to the shortlist, which also includes Katrina Manson, Alex Perry, Aimee Donnellan and Carissa Véliz.
The 22nd annual prize will award £30,000 to the winner in London on December 2, while each shortlisted author receives £10,000.
Technology has increasingly dominated the award: five of the past six winners wrote on tech, including last year’s Nvidia-focused The Thinking Machine and 2024’s AI book Supremacy.
With AI dominating top business literature, are we dangerously ignoring the explosive geopolitical costs of our ongoing energy and public health crises?
As military AI and superintelligence race forward, will the clash between scientific ambition and commercial greed trigger our next great global depression?
If predictive AI shapes human behavior rather than just forecasting it, could our reliance on algorithms ultimately destroy democratic uncertainty?