Why are we here? What does it mean to love? How do we overcome suffering? Why do we feel so alone? Is happiness truly possible?

For thousands of years, humanity has turned to the same sacred texts to explore these universal questions—from the Bible and the Tao Te Ching, to the poetry of Rumi and Sappho, to modern-day mystics. What if you could take all of the wisdom contained within these collective pages and, using the world’s most advanced artificial intelligence, receive the answers?

Thanks to OpenAI, a nonprofit research lab cofounded by Elon Musk and other tech luminaries, this is now possible. OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that artificial intelligence serves the betterment of humanity—and What Makes Us Human? offers an innovative exploration of AI’s potential in this realm.

To create this first-of-its-kind book, international bestselling poet Iain S. Thomas and prodigious researcher and innovator Jasmine Wang collaborated with OpenAI’s GPT-3, an advanced artificial intelligence. Wang and Thomas prompted GPT-3 with thousands of humanity’s greatest texts, and then asked GPT-3 our most pressing questions. Contained in this book are the conversations and exchanges that followed.

A bold, daring experiment, What Makes Us Human? is a contemporary exploration of spirituality that will inspire a new understanding of what makes us humans, humans.