The God Test - by Robert Wright (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

From bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize finalist Robert Wright comes a sweeping new view of artificial intelligence that argues this revolution will challenge us spiritually and could restore a missing ingredient in modern life--our sense of purpose.

The God Test is the first book that sees AI not just as a technological tool with good and bad applications, but as an evolutionary force that will alter the trajectory of humanity itself. Written by one of our foremost public intellectuals, and informed by his decades of chronicling the digital age, the book boldly asserts that the current wave of AI progress is just the beginning. The changes we are about to witness will bring the most abruptly dramatic transformation in the history of our species.

Wright provocatively suggests that to truly understand the significance of the AI revolution, we need to expand our perspective beyond the last century or even the whole history of technology and look back billions of years, across the entire history of life on Earth. All along, he says, evolution has been pushing life toward this technological threshold, which now confronts our species with a climactic challenge: Can we muster the political, moral, and spiritual resources needed to guide this technology wisely?

If we fail this challenge, the consequences for the whole planet could be grave. But if we meet the challenge--if we pass "the God test"--we can live in a world where humanity thrives, finding not just happiness but deeper meaning and purpose. We can be enriched and uplifted by, rather than imperiled by, awesomely intelligent machines.

About the Author

Robert Wright is the New York Times bestselling author of The Evolution of God (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), Nonzero, The Moral Animal, Three Scientists and their Gods (a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award), and Why Buddhism Is True. He is the cofounder and editor-in-chief of the widely respected Bloggingheads.tv and MeaningofLife.tv. He has written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, Time, Slate, and The New Republic. He has taught at the University of Pennsylvania and at Princeton University, where he also created the popular online course "Buddhism and Modern Psychology." He is currently Visiting Professor of Science and Religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York.