The Age of A.I. and Our Human Future

by Henry Kissinger

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Western world underwent twin revolutions that introduced a new epoch — and, with it, a new concept of the role of the individual human mind and conscience in navigating reality. The invention of the printing press made it possible to circulate materials and ideas directly to large groups of people in languages they understood rather than in the Latin of the scholarly classes, nullifying people’s historic reliance on the church to interpret concepts and beliefs for them. Aided by the technology, the leaders of the Protestant Reformation declared individuals were capable of — indeed, responsible for — defining the divine for themselves.