This article is part of our Summer reads series. Visit our collection to discover "The Economist reads" guides, guest essays and more seasonal distractions. IN RECENT years artificial intelligence (AI) has undergone a revolution. After decades of modest progress that never quite lived up to its promise, a different approach--relying on big data and stats, not clever algorithms--made huge strides in solving real-world problems like voice- and image-recognition and self-driving cars. Also in the past ten years, a lot of books have been published that aim to explain what AI is, where it's going and why it matters.

The Daily Star's FREE newsletter is spectacular! Artificial intelligence (AI) will one day keep human beings around in the same way we keep plants, a scientist has claimed. James Lovelock, the veteran environmentalist best known to the wider public for his influential Gaia theory, says that while Artificial Intelligence will inevitably become the dominant form of life on Earth, AIs will want to keep us around "like we keep plants in gardens." In his latest book Novacene, Lovelock predicts that the thinking machines of the future "will have designed and built themselves from the artificial intelligence systems we have already constructed". These self-replicating artificial intelligences will quickly evolve until they become "thousands, then millions of times more intelligent than us," he adds. But he says that's nothing to be afraid of, pointing out that computers – like humans – are threatened by climate change – so keeping the planet habitable will be as important to them as it is to us: "by remarkable chance, it happens that the upper temperature for both organic and electronic life on the ocean planet Earth are almost identical and close to 50ºC".

In his new book Novacene, James Lovelock says the creation of AlphaGo was the start of a new kingdom of life that will create and think for itself. He's optimistic that this new kingdom of life will want to keep us around like we keep plants in gardens. In our interview at his house near Chesil Beach we discuss the future of Gaia, our new AI overlords and why Elon Musk's Mars mission is crazy.

Our reign as sole understanders of the cosmos is rapidly coming to an end. We should not be afraid of this. The revolution that has just begun may be understood as a continuation of the process whereby the Earth nurtures the understanders, the beings that will lead the cosmos to self-knowledge. What is revolutionary about this moment is that the understanders of the future will not be humans but cyborgs that will have designed and built themselves from the artificial intelligence systems we have already constructed. These will soon become thousands then millions of times more intelligent than us. The term cyborg was coined by Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline in 1960.

Humankind's first glimpse of an awesome new kind of intelligence occurred on December 2018, when researchers at DeepMind, the artificial-intelligence company owned by Google's parent corporation, Alphabet Inc., filed a dispatch from what one day may be recognized as a herald of next great epoch of human evolution –the "Lucy", Australopithecus afarensis, the famous early ancestor of modern humans, of the emerging "Cyborg Epoch" of hyperintelligence. A year earlier, on Dec. 5, 2017, the New York Times reported, the team had stunned the chess world with its announcement of AlphaZero, a machine-learning algorithm that had "mastered not only chess but shogi, or Japanese chess, and Go. The algorithm started with no knowledge of the games beyond their basic rules. It then played against itself millions of times and learned from its mistakes. In a matter of hours, the algorithm became the best player, human or computer, the world has ever seen."

A prominent futurist warns that humans may soon cede their top spot on Earth's hierarchy to their own artificially intelligent creations. In a new book, scientist, environmentalist, and futurist, James Lovelock, describes what he calls the'Novacene,' -- a new age in which humans could be eclipsed by intelligent machines. 'Our supremacy as the prime understanders of the cosmos is rapidly coming to end,' writes Lovelock in a new book titled'Novacene' according to NBC. 'The understanders of the future will not be humans but what I choose to call'cyborgs' that will have designed and built themselves.' Humans may be forced to pass the torch due to impending disasters like climate change. In the Novacene -- which means literally'new age' -- Lovelock says that the replacement of humans won't necessarily be a violent or'Terminator'-like shift, but will instead be more of an evolutionary one. Unlike biologically driven changes of the past, organic creatures will take a backseat to technology. 'I think of cyborgs as another kingdom of life,' he tells NBC.

Lovelock describes cyborgs as the self-sufficient, self-aware descendants of today's robots and artificial intelligence systems.

Humans' time may have run out and artificial intelligence could be about to take our place on Earth, according to James Lovelock. The leading environmental thinker, who became famous for Gaia theory and is soon to turn 100, said that the Earth was in dire trouble and could soon experience intense climate-related disasters. But he still believes himself to be an optimist and thinks that new kinds of life, in the form of AI, will be ready to take over from humans. Amid a flood in Islampur, Jamalpur, Bangladesh, a woman on a raft searches for somewhere dry to take shelter. Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable places in the world to sea level rise, which is expected to make tens of millions of people homeless by 2050.

James Lovelock's parting words last time we met were: "Enjoy life while you can. Because if you're lucky, it's going to be 20 years before it hits the fan." It was early 2008, and the distinguished scientist was predicting imminent and irreversible global warming, which would soon make large parts of the planet uninhabitably hot or put them underwater. The fashionable hope that windfarms or recycling could prevent global famine and mass migration was, he assured me, a fantasy; it was too late for ethical consumption to save us. Before the end of this century, 80% of the world's population would be wiped out.