內容簡介
提出「蓋婭理論」的百歲科學家詹姆斯．洛夫洛克(James Lovelock)為未來的世代提出一個人類與人工智慧攜手合作拯救地球的願景。
詹姆斯．洛夫洛克不僅是「蓋婭假說」的創建者，也是我們這個時代最偉大的環境思想家，為地球生命的未來提出一個令人震撼的新理論。他認為過去300年來所謂的「人類世」(Anthropocene)即將走入終點，取而代之的是他所提出的「新星世」。
在「新星世」裡，新的生物將從現有的人工智慧系統中誕生。他們思考的速度是我們的一萬倍，看待我們就如同我們看待植物一般，但這並不是科幻小說所想像的殘酷且暴力的機器拿下地球的情況。這些高智能生物將跟人類一樣，需要的是一個健康的地球，他們需要蓋婭的行星冷卻系統，如同我們盡其所能地抵禦來自太陽不斷上升的熱。蓋婭依賴有機生命，那麼在這個方案中，人類與高智能生物就必須成為夥伴來攜手合作。
洛夫洛克強調，地球智慧的生存與繁衍是極其重要的。他不認為有所謂的智慧外星人，所以我們是唯一有能力了解宇宙的生物，他甚至假設，「新星世」是一個進程的開始，這個起點引領我們成為滿足整個宇宙的智能。高齡100的洛夫洛克，完成了他畢生最重要且完滿的作品《新星世》(Novacene)。
New beings will emerge from existing artificial intelligence systems. They will think 10,000 times faster than we do and they will regard us as we now regard plants - as desperately slow acting and thinking creatures. But this will not be the cruel, violent machine takeover of the planet imagined by sci-fi writers and film-makers. These hyper-intelligent beings will be as dependent on the health of the planet as we are. They will need the planetary cooling system of Gaia to defend them from the increasing heat of the sun as much as we do. And Gaia depends on organic life. We will be partners in this project.
It is crucial, Lovelock argues, that the intelligence of Earth survives and prospers. He does not think there are intelligent aliens, so we are the only beings capable of understanding the cosmos. Maybe, he speculates, the novacene could even be the beginning of a process that will finally lead to intelligence suffusing the entire cosmos. At the age 100, James Lovelock has produced the most important and compelling work of his life.