Novacene

Novacene presents James Lovelock's provocative vision of Earth's future, arguing that the Anthropocene—the age of human dominance—is ending and giving way to the Novacene, an era in which artificial intelligence and autonomous machines will become the dominant form of intelligence on the planet. Written when Lovelock was over 100 years old, the work reflects his decades of systems thinking and his Gaia hypothesis framework.

Lovelock contends that AI will not destroy humanity but rather will evolve in symbiosis with biological life. He argues that machine intelligence, operating at vastly faster timescales than human cognition, will solve problems humans cannot—from climate change to resource management—while humans provide the "wisdom" and ethical grounding that pure computation lacks. The book is structured as a series of interconnected essays exploring this transition.

The work has been influential in shaping contemporary debates about AI futures, human-machine coevolution, and the long-term trajectory of Earth's biosphere. It bridges Lovelock's scientific legacy with speculative futures thinking, appealing to both academic and popular audiences concerned with existential risk and technological transformation.