From Prehistory to the Age of AGI: How Our Deep Past and the Science of Intelligence Shape Our Future Human-AGI World

About The Book

What happens when AGI races ahead of human understanding?

What are minds? Why might merely ‘intelligent’ minds, human or AGI, pose existential risks? By looking back at prehistory, we find our only precedent for the emergence of advanced minds. Only with these insights can we begin to understand and truly shape human-AGI futures.

Technological innovations are always social and cultural phenomena. We cannot, therefore, resolve the ‘AGI problem’ without fundamentally tackling the deeper ‘hard problem’ of human behaviour and destructive tendencies.

Part scientific quest, part prehistoric epic, and deeply philosophical this book proposes a vital dual track to address existential risks: immediate action to buy us time, and long-term modern humanist pathways toward genuine planetary flourishing.

Drawing on this unique consilience of the sciences and humanism, this work moves past narrow techno-commercial proposals. Grounded in empirical reality while expanding our normative frameworks, it bridges the gap between how the world is and how it ought to be across four comprehensive parts:

Part I – Past: What HAS happened (PREHISTORY & COGNITIVE EVOLUTION)
Part II – Nature: What IS (INTELLIGENCE & CONSCIOUSNESS AS PHYSICAL SYSTEMS)
Part III – Potential: What COULD happen (AGI OPERATING IN THE WORLD)
Part IV – Normative Futures: What SHOULD happen (FLOURISHING IN A HUMAN-AGI WORLD)
Valuable Appendices Included:

IMPLEMENTATION: Past examples of collective human change.
FOUNDATIONS: The physical emergence of minds.
EXPLANATIONS: Detailed conceptual notes and maps.
The accelerating advance toward AGI threatens a permanent state of existential risk. The decisions made in the coming years will decide our direction: conflict and destruction, or coexistence and flourishing.

About The Author

Kai Taraporevala is a writer who has lived in India, the U.K., France, West Asia, and Singapore. He holds Master of Science degrees in Physics from IIT Delhi, the University of Dundee, and the Open University (U.K.). He completed his Open University degree with a specialization in Astrophysics with Space Science in December 2025 at the age of 60.

His business career includes an MBA from INSEAD and decades in corporate finance, advising global companies and business families, and investing. This blend of scientific rigour, cross-cultural experience, and real-world insight shapes his approach to ethics and policy.

Kai is the author of Modern Humanism: Science, Ethics, and the Stewardship of Earth (2025) and co-author of Value Creation for Owners and Directors (2023). He writes with gratitude for the many kindnesses he has received and to spark meaningful dialogues.