Artificial intelligence does not arrive in a vacuum. It arrives into cultures, economies, and political orders already shaped by centuries of competing assumptions about progress, freedom, and the human person. Subhash Kak — Regents Professor at Oklahoma State University and a member of India's Prime Minister's Science, Technology, and Innovation Advisory Council — maps what happens when a technology of this magnitude collides with those fault lines.
Drawing on the distinct historical responses of the West, China, and India to previous upheavals, Kak argues that culture and memory are not soft factors but structural ones: they determine whether AI liberates or alienates, whether it expands human dignity or erodes it. The book warns against AI deployed without an ethical framework — what Kak calls a "dharmic algorithm" — and examines the geopolitical equations that make the stakes global rather than merely national.
This is a book for readers who want to think about AI in terms wider than capability benchmarks — who understand that the question of what machines can do is inseparable from the question of what kind of civilisation we want to protect.
ABOUT THE BOOK: "A brilliant book and a compelling read for everyone interested in the future of humanity." -Amitabh Mattoo, JNU "It expands the canvas of global affairs, imbues it with science, and offers a prism to view the centuries ahead." -Gautam Chikermane, Observer Research Foundation "It warns us about the dangers of unbridled AI if employed without an ethical 'mirror', and without a dharmic algorithm." -J.C.R. Calazans Duarte, Lisbon University "A deep and major dive into the future dominated by ideas related to AI." -Menas Kafatos, Chapman University The Age of Artificial Intelligence summarizes new developments in AI, its challenges and limitations in the background of evolving geopolitical equations. It also deals with the historical experience of the West, China, and India in coping with major upheavals as that will serve as template for the response to future AI-triggered disruptions. If AI has the potential to set us free from drudgery, it can also alienate, homogenize, and enslave, but culture and memory serve as safeguard for they make human dignity and freedom central to human progress. ~~~ Subhash Kak is Regents Professor at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater and a Distinguished Academic Scholar at Chapman University. He has authored thirty books, of which the most recent ones are The Idea of India: Bharat as a Civilisation and Eternal Bharat: Truth, Meaning, and Beauty. Since 2018, he has been a member of the Indian Prime Minister's Science, Technology, and Innovation Advisory Council.
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