The Age of AI and Our Human Future
by Henry Kissinger
View on GoodreadsKissinger, Eric Schmidt (former Google CEO), and Daniel Huttenlocher's 2021 framework book on AI as a paradigm-shifting technology — comparable in implications to the Enlightenment's break with religious epistemology.
Core ideas
- AI is producing "non-human partners in cognition" — systems whose reasoning is opaque even to their makers, which forces a philosophical question about what counts as knowledge when its source isn't human or fully inspectable.
- The geopolitical claim: AI competence is becoming the load-bearing element of national power in the same way nuclear capability was after 1945, and the international order doesn't yet have institutions adequate to the new technology.
- The book is more measured than the contemporaneous accelerationist or doomer literature — Kissinger's framing throughout is "this requires new diplomatic and philosophical work, urgently," not "this will save us" or "this will kill us."
Published2021
Pages272
ISBN9780316273800
ReadApr 2025
