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The God Test by Robert Wright

from $11.99
Hardcover:

What if the rise of artificial intelligence isn't just a technological revolution — but the most consequential moment in the entire history of life on Earth?

From Pulitzer Prize finalist and New York Times bestselling author Robert Wright, The God Test is the boldest, most far-reaching argument yet written about what artificial intelligence means for the future of our species.

Rent new hardcover on Trove: $11.99 - Each rental copy can be rented for 30 days. If you love the book and decide to keep it, the remaining balance applies.

Buy new hardcover on Trove: $30.00

_______________________________________

About the book:

The God Test opens with a deceptively simple premise: to truly understand what artificial intelligence is doing to our world, you can't just look back a decade, or a century, or even across the whole history of human technology. You have to look back billions of years — to the very origins of life itself.

Robert Wright argues that the forces driving the AI revolution are not new. They are the same evolutionary dynamics that produced intelligent life on Earth in the first place — and understanding them is the key to understanding where we are headed, and whether we can change course.

The book is the first of its kind to clearly explain the breakthroughs behind the current wave of AI advance and compellingly show why that wave will only grow in magnitude and meaning. Wright does not offer easy comfort, but he does offer something rarer: a genuinely coherent framework for thinking about what comes next.

At the heart of The God Test is a challenge Wright calls our "climactic reckoning." Can humanity muster the political, moral, and even spiritual resources needed to guide this technology wisely? The stakes, he argues, could not be higher — for our species, and for the planet we share.

But Wright is not a doomsayer. If we rise to meet this challenge — if we pass the God test — he envisions a world where humanity doesn't merely survive the age of intelligent machines, but finds in it a deeper sense of meaning, purpose, and human connection than we have ever known.

What if the rise of artificial intelligence isn't just a technological revolution — but the most consequential moment in the entire history of life on Earth?

From Pulitzer Prize finalist and New York Times bestselling author Robert Wright, The God Test is the boldest, most far-reaching argument yet written about what artificial intelligence means for the future of our species.

Rent new hardcover on Trove: $11.99 - Each rental copy can be rented for 30 days. If you love the book and decide to keep it, the remaining balance applies.

Buy new hardcover on Trove: $30.00

_______________________________________

About the book:

The God Test opens with a deceptively simple premise: to truly understand what artificial intelligence is doing to our world, you can't just look back a decade, or a century, or even across the whole history of human technology. You have to look back billions of years — to the very origins of life itself.

Robert Wright argues that the forces driving the AI revolution are not new. They are the same evolutionary dynamics that produced intelligent life on Earth in the first place — and understanding them is the key to understanding where we are headed, and whether we can change course.

The book is the first of its kind to clearly explain the breakthroughs behind the current wave of AI advance and compellingly show why that wave will only grow in magnitude and meaning. Wright does not offer easy comfort, but he does offer something rarer: a genuinely coherent framework for thinking about what comes next.

At the heart of The God Test is a challenge Wright calls our "climactic reckoning." Can humanity muster the political, moral, and even spiritual resources needed to guide this technology wisely? The stakes, he argues, could not be higher — for our species, and for the planet we share.

But Wright is not a doomsayer. If we rise to meet this challenge — if we pass the God test — he envisions a world where humanity doesn't merely survive the age of intelligent machines, but finds in it a deeper sense of meaning, purpose, and human connection than we have ever known.

  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster

    Title:The God Test: Artificial Intelligence and Our Coming Cosmic Reckoning

    Author: Robert Wright

    On Sale Date: June 23, 2026

    ISBN 13: 9781668061657

    ISBN 10: 1668061651

    Format: Hardcover

    Retail Price: $30.00 USD

    BISAC: Computers / Artificial Intelligence

    Page Count: 352

    Dimensions: 9 in H | 6 in W | 1.2 in T

    Weight: 1.1 lb

  • Robert Wright is the New York Times bestselling author of five landmark books, including The Evolution of God — a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize — The Moral Animal, Nonzero, Why Buddhism Is True, and Three Scientists and their Gods, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His work spans evolutionary biology, religion, philosophy, and the history of technology, and has made him one of the most respected public intellectuals of his generation. He has written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, Time, Slate, and The New Republic.

    Wright has taught at the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University, where he created the widely popular online course "Buddhism and Modern Psychology." He is the cofounder and editor-in-chief of Bloggingheads.tv and MeaningofLife.tv, and currently serves as Visiting Professor of Science and Religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York. With Why Buddhism Is True surpassing 400,000 copies sold across all formats, Wright brings to The God Test both a proven readership and four decades of thinking about the forces — technological, evolutionary, and spiritual — that shape human civilization.

  • Pre-release readers are calling it visionary, clarifying, and essential:

    • Early readers describe The God Test as a book that cuts through the noise of the AI conversation like nothing else — offering not just warnings, but a genuinely satisfying intellectual framework for understanding what is happening to our world.

    • Reviewers note that Wright stands apart from other voices in the AI debate precisely because of the depth and sweep of his argument, connecting artificial intelligence to billions of years of evolutionary history in a way no other author has dared attempt.

    • Readers who came in skeptical or overwhelmed by the AI conversation say Wright's well-laid-out thinking answered questions they hadn't known how to ask, leaving them with a clearer and more grounded sense of what the future might hold.

    • Longtime Wright readers call The God Test a classic of his canon — ambitious, rigorous, and ultimately hopeful, a book that challenges you to think bigger about technology, humanity, and the meaning of it all.

This book is for you if:

  • You believe that the questions raised by artificial intelligence are not just political or economic — but profoundly moral and spiritual.

  • You've read the headlines about artificial intelligence but want to read from a thinker with depth and historical context.

  • You're drawn to big-picture arguments that connect technology, evolution, philosophy, and spirituality into a single, coherent vision of where we are and where we're going.

  • You appreciate writers who are honest about the risks of transformative technology without giving way to pessimism or panic.

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