After Homo Sapiens

Three million years ago, when the first Homo sapiens picked up a stone to crack a nut, the spark of civilization was ignited. For millennia, every leap of human civilization has been a thorough restructuring of our way of existence. We extended our bodies with tools, passed down wisdom through language, organized groups with institutions, and inherited spirit through culture. All our struggles, creations, and sufferings revolved around one core proposition: how to survive.
This pattern persisted until the arrival of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Unlike previous revolutions that merely replaced human muscle power with machines, the intelligent revolution replaces human cognition with artificial intelligence, extending human thinking and making "gain without labor" possible for the first time. It is the most profound transformation of human existential mode since the Cognitive Revolution.
This book traces the century-long evolution of the intelligent revolution from 2025 to 2150, using the four-dimensional logic of "technological breakthrough ? social implementation ? institutional adaptation ? value crystallization". It analyzes how AGI will reshape every aspect of human society, from the initial wave of job displacement to the establishment of a post-scarcity distribution system, and finally to the complete reshaping of human values.
Drawing on classic theories and cutting-edge research across the history of technology, economics, sociology, philosophy, and futurology, the author rejects speculative science fiction and presents a rigorous, evidence-based projection of humanity's future. It examines the four distinct UBI implementation models that emerged globally, explores the eternal tension between AI's infinite productivity and human finitude, and answers the ultimate question: when AI can do everything, what is the meaning of human existence?The book argues that human uniqueness lies not in being smarter or more efficient than AI, but in being flesh-and-blood beings with emotions, souls, and free will.
As AI takes over all instrumental labor, humanity will finally be freed from the burden of survival to pursue what is uniquely human: creating beauty, exploring truth, deepening connections, and seeking meaning. After Homo sapiens comes not the end of humanity, but the beginning of our true history. The three-million-year era of survival competition has ended. The three-million-year journey of meaning creation has just begun.
This is the second origin of human civilization.