2026 Good Reads From Origami Labs
What a year it has been here at Origami Labs. We have had the opportunity to engage in some of the most fascinating and exciting projects out there, and to build some really amazing technology.
As we set off into the holiday period, the team thought we should share some of our good reads, that have really helped shape who we are as a team and how we look at the world of AI. If you find yourself in front of a fire with a bit of downtime over the break, why not give one of them a go!
1) An Embassy To China, the journal kept by Lord Macartney during his Embassy to chine in the 18th century, detailing some of the earliest Anglo-Chinese trade, and a vision of life in China at the time. Fascinating to see the start of a geopolitical relationship that still drives policy today.
2) Leviathan wakes, Sci-fi at its absolute best. If you fancy something more on the fiction side, this feels like reading a blockbuster!
3) The Singularity is Nearer, a title that feels far more controversial than the content, this really starts to get under the hood of looking at how we might think differently about how we build artificial intelligence through in-depth analysis of human cognition.
4) Countdown to zero-day, a brilliant breakdown of how a cyber-attack goes from detection, analysis, attribution and protection. It looks at the days and years following the discovery of StuxNet, in a time where most people had no idea what a cyber-attack was, it is fascinating to see how the landscape has changed.
5) It Takes Two to Entangle - a Dstl biscuit book, it has been around for a couple of years, but it is still a fantastic summary of the quantum technology landscape in a digestible form.
6) Snow crash, a thrilling and fantastical look forward into a future that is as much comic irony as it is prophetic, despite being nearly 35 years old, concerns about the interaction between the digital and physical world make this feel very current.
7) Catch-22, hilariously funny and deadly serious at the same time, it's representation of the madness of war at a personal level is a must for anyone interested in Defence.
8) Klara and the sun, ever thought of seeing it from the machines perspective? As dystopian as it is enthralling, a must for anyone in AI, especially computer vision.
9) Artificial Intelligence Safety and Security, slightly old given it was published in 2018 but this is one of the first texts with broad coverage of AI Safety & Security issues. Also contains nice reminders that agentic concepts aren't new…
10) Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software, a great introduction beneath the abstraction of modern computing, helping you really understand what your computer is doing, and how to make the most of it.
We hope you all have a fantastic time over the holidays and look forward to seeing what 2026 brings.
~ The Origami Labs Team