Navigating the Novacene
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are...
Tennyson's Ulysses is how James Lovelock chooses to end his 2019 book, Novacene, about the coming age of Hyperintelligence.
Lovelock, perhaps most famous for developing the Gaia hypothesis, wrote Novacene at the end of his life.
The book predicts the emergence of new intelligent lifeforms, AI, and that humanity's role is as midwife to this new stage in the evolution of life on Earth.
Rereading it in 2025 is a strange experience.
In 2019, there was no ChatGPT. OpenAI had just released GPT-2. AlphaZero was probably the most publicised demonstration of the potential of the technology, but, beyond a niche of tech nerds and serious Go enthusiasts, it wasn't having a direct impact on the lives of many people.
Since then, AI has become central to our daily experience, reshaping everything from relationships to geopolitics. It's surreal to recall how different things were just six years ago.
In this sense, Sam Altman is right about climbing the arc of exponential technological progress: "it always looks vertical looking forward and flat going backwards, but it’s one smooth curve."
Perhaps the most humbling part of the book is the long view of history and geology that Lovelock takes.
We're bombarded with updates and AI progress daily, and, in keeping with the singularity, the progress seems to be accelerating.
It's not just hard to keep up, it's likely impossible - not without leveraging the systems and intelligences being created, which of course drives the flywheel even faster.
Imagining the future of Earth millions of years into the future, potentially shaped by spherical cyborg intelligences, offers a vantage point far beyond AI productivity tips on LinkedIn.
But Lovelock’s vision in Novacene isn’t one of despair or defeat. It's one of transition.
In his telling, humanity is not the end point of intelligence on Earth, but a bridge to something new.
That may sound unsettling, but it also offers clarity. If we are the midwives of a new form of intelligence, then our role is not to compete with it, but to shape the conditions in which it emerges. And to decide how we choose to live alongside it.
As a parent myself, the knowledge that we are what our children grow beyond is bittersweet. But I also know that it makes what we do today more important, not less.
I don’t know whether what Lovelock predicts will come to pass. But even if it doesn’t, it serves as a timely reminder of what makes us unique.
In the short term, that means focusing less on racing machines and more on being fully human: cultivating judgment, curiosity, empathy, and responsibility.
These are qualities that don’t scale as easily as computation, but matter far more when navigating uncertainty.
In the long term, it means recognising that our legacy won’t be defined by how fast we moved, but by what we chose to care about along the way.
"That which we are, we are".
What will you be today?