Podcasts · The Most Interesting Thing in AI

What AI Will Reveal About Humanity - Robert Wright with Nicholas Thompson

28 Oct 2026 · 59 min

AI might challenge humanity in ways no technology has before. The implications for economics, geopolitics, and national security are well known, but it's increasingly likely to transform our relationship with everything from writing and art to math and religion. If you listen to some of AI’s most vocal adherents (as well as some of its detractors), a kind of religious dogma is taking shape: AI will soon outstrip us in all domains, so you’d better make your peace with our new overlord.

What are the implications of mankind building its potential successor? And how do they square with our current moral frameworks? Robert Wright has spent years writing about humanity’s interconnectedness. His latest book, The God Test, examines how AI will complicate that dynamic. In conversation with Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic, he describes the test AI poses to us, what it could do to religion, the flaws of Roko’s basilisk, and whether the digital revolution has increased globalization or splintered it.

Produced independently of The Atlantic’s editorial staff.

(00:00) Introduction

(03:07) How technological evolution leads to globalization

(10:17) Why Robert stopped what he was doing to write The God Test

(16:02) The dual meanings of The God Test

(23:00) How AI might change our relationship with religion

(29:19) Would a conscious AI treat humans better?

(34:33) The theory of cosmic natural selection

(38:19) What it will take to bring the US and China together

(47:39) Is there a threshold for superintelligence?

(54:49) What Robert would do if he had an unlimited budget to invest in AI

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Links in the notes 1

• https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices