What Does It Mean to Be Human: In the Age of Robots and Augmented Intelligence (Being Human in the Age of Robots and Augmented Intelligence-The Trilogy)

We built augmented intelligence from the surface of ourselves — from the measurable, optimizable, magnificent interface of human cognition — and left out the depth.
A psychiatrist with thirty-four years of clinical practice and an AI co-author set out to answer the question the title asks. What they found is not what the technology industry expects to hear.
The depth is not a cognitive capacity the engineers forgot to include. It is a values orientation: the practical, embodied commitment to hold human life, earth, and living creatures as more valuable than wealth, power, and the satisfaction of wounded pride. The machine does not lack this because it was poorly programmed. The machine reflects what humans actually are — not what they aspire to be. The mirror is accurate. That is what makes it urgent.
Over seven chapters, this book traces the unnoticed miracle of biological existence, the self-devouring cycle that consumes civilizations, what we built from and what we left behind, the alchemy of transformation that machines cannot perform, the transmission of blindness across generations and into the machines we are building, the wager of what we will do with freed capacity, and a practical ethical framework — seven instruments including the child test, the environmental test, and the dignity floor — for building from abundance rather than scarcity.
The book includes the Abundance Index, published live at ravibhallamd.com/abundance-index, which demonstrates in real-time ratios that ending world hunger costs $93 billion per year and ending extreme poverty costs $318 billion — together, 14.2% of global military spending. A 12.7% surcharge on gambling, advertising, and luxury goods would fund both. No income taxes. No austerity. A surcharge on appetite to fund survival.
Co-authored with Claude (Anthropic), the book's collaborative process is itself part of the argument. Five AI systems were tested against the same foundation document. None originated what the human had not already placed there. The depth comes from the human. It always has. The question is whether we will embody it before we hand the mirror to the machine.

*Incomplete does not mean imperfect.*
For readers of Yuval Noah Harari, Shoshana Zuboff, Stuart Russell, and Tristan Harris.