Artificial Wisdom by Thomas R. Weaver is an excellent fast-paced technothriller, which covers two of the most pressing issues facing humanity: the climate emergency and the AI crisis.
It deftly explores how these simultaneously-induced issues could upend society as we know it. The novel isn’t just a terrifying look at what the future could hold, but also a clear warning giving humanity the opportunity to decide if we wish to go down this perilous path.
Please note the following review contains spoilers.
About Artificial Wisdom
The book is set a couple of decades in the future. Climate breakdown has accelerated and widespread impacts are being felt around much of the world. The Floating States are some of the few protected places, as they’re self-contained and protected from the elements. This is where the rich have sought to see out climate chaos – in comfort and luxury.
The Floating States are also home to Martha Chandra, a genius who develops advanced AI systems, which verge on AGI/superintelligence. One of these is an artificial intellect called Solomon, which is currently Governor of the Floating States.
Given the dire situation, it has been decided to elect a global dictator. The final two candidates shock many people; one is an ex-US president, Lawrence G. Lockwood, with a questionable record. The other? Solomon, the first artificial intellect developed by Martha Chandra.
As the dictator election looms, Chandra is murdered. This at the time when the protagonist and journalist, Marcus Tully had arrived to interview her about an even bigger story with massive implications. At least that’s the truth as far as Tully understands it. But he misses his opportunity and is nearly killed in the process. So begins a quest to unravel who was behind the murder. Tully is assisted by the Commissioner of the Police, October, as well as Martha’s sister, Livia.
Together they need to unravel the truth; but that will only be half the battle. Because what if the truth stands in the way of something even bigger? This is what the protagonist will have to grapple with in this page-turner of a novel.
Artificial Wisdom and cli-fi
“Humans can only visualise short term. The distant future is someone else’s problem, as if it’s not their children and children’s children that will inherit all this.”
Stories are powerful methods of communicating important messages. We are creatures of story and therefore absorb information more naturally through them.
Climate fiction, or cli-fi for short, is a genre of fiction that deals specifically with novels about climate breakdown. I’ve previously written in Mongabay about how this genre has the potential to inspire climate action.
Artificial Wisdom is a great example of climate fiction. The climate emergency is a central theme in this book, and one of the reasons a global dictator is being installed is to avert a “climate apocalypse.”
One of the most disturbing events in the novel, which has cascading implications is the “tabkhir.” This hit the Persian Gulf, including Kuwait City, where Tully’s pregnant wife was at the time. The tabkhir was a weather event characterised by high heat and extremely high humidity. High heat can be deadly, but the issue with high humidity is that it prevents the body from being able to cool down. When high heat and high humidity merge, it can create extremely deadly conditions. In the case of the tabkhir, this led to millions of deaths. As Tully’s tech guy Randall explains, the tabkhir,
“Was the first time on record we hit forty-two degrees centigrade on the wet-bulb, right? And anything after thirty-five, wet, would make the heat feel more like fifty, so this would have felt more like sixty. At that humidity, sweat no longer cools you, it just doesn’t work, it’s incredible really, your brain starts to shut down, then all the organs follow and, bam! You’re dead, cooked from the inside out. I mean, tabkhir kinda translates as steaming.”
There are worrying signs we’re heading in this direction with many regions of the world set to become uninhabitable. In the space of just 10 years between 2015 and 2025, around 250 million people were displaced as a result of the climate crisis.
Even more disturbing is the prediction that around 1.2 billion people may be displaced by 2050. Many of these people may seek more habitable zones to live in, which are less affected by climate chaos. Imagine a billion climate refugees… Where will these people go? How will they survive? What will they do for work, if AI takes away up to a billion jobs as Professor Stuart Russell predicted? It is a very bleak future that awaits us. Indeed, in Artificial Wisdom, there are protests by the “climate-unhomed” and these protests are brutally crushed through illegal technology. This is where the dystopian world of tech meets climate breakdown, and the outcomes are terrible for the majority of people.
Climate disasters are mentioned several times in the book, painting a grim picture of the trajectory we’re on. To take just one example:
“A typhoon had hit Nepal. The remaining citizens of Australia were negotiating mass emigration after a decade of wildfires had scorched life on the island. More concerning, two billion people in sub-Saharan Africa were experiencing a combination of famine and drought never before seen in a region famed for such plights. Nigeria had descended into anarchy, not a good sign for a country with the third largest population in the world.”
Weaver does an excellent job of portraying the future we’re headed towards, and also clearly explains why we’ve been put on this disastrous course, “it’s the lies and misinformation from politicians from back when I was a kid that have almost destroyed our society, polarised us, stopped us addressing the biggest issue of our time because people simply didn’t believe in it.”
Artificial Wisdom and Arin-fi/ty-fi
“You make him sound like a god,” Tully murmured. Danberg chuckled. “Sometimes I think he might be!”
Much like the term cli-fi denotes the genre of fiction dedicated to the climate emergency, I’ve proposed new terminology for the AI crisis. I’ve suggested that sci-fi is potentially too broad a term and that we could do with something dedicated to the risks posed by AI. To that extent, I proposed the terms “arin-fi” for artificial intelligence fiction, and “ty-fi” for technology fiction. I believe Artificial Wisdom is a great example of arin-fi and ty-fi, with AI being another core theme throughout the novel.
The AI in this book is the first artilect, Solomon, which Martha Chandra developed to make decisions in our best interests. This idea is very similar to that espoused by the tech titans currently developing AI which they acknowledge could lead to our downfall. They shout about the benefits it could bring to humanity, whilst also sharing their concrete concerns about how it could wipe us out. After which they cheerfully return to developing it – as if that was a normal thing to do. It isn’t.
In the novel, an immersive type of virtual reality known as neuro-reality allows people to enter a virtual landscape and meet others there, whilst their physical body remains in our physical reality. Solomon is able to manifest itself to look like a real person in neuro-reality. As would be expected, Solomon can also analyse “billions of data points in nanoseconds” to arrive at a decision, whilst also speaking with many people in different conversations at once.
Tully asks Solomon at one point if he thinks he can genuinely save humanity. Solomon understands that the world is made up of interconnected systems and that it won’t be an easy fix and makes no guarantees. Yet it concludes that, “I’m your best chance.”
But what happens when AI is used for nefarious purposes? One of the investors in Chandra’s company, Pedersen, wants Solomon to develop weapons systems to generate bigger revenue streams and more profit. This is worrying given that there is a raging debate these days about killer robots and autonomous weapons systems (AWS), with AI already being deployed in warzones including Gaza and Ukraine. We’re on a very slippery slope with no regulations and safeguards in place and that brings profound risks for humanity.
One of the characters in the novel, Flora, explains how technology has already caused widespread societal harm, when she says,
“They sold it as a way of freeing humanity, but it was about doing the opposite. They flooded Silicon Valley with money until a computer was in every pocket. Then they funded the invention of social media to track everyone, to know what they liked and believed. Then they corrupted those beliefs, played them back to people in their own echo chambers. And slowly, humanity became polarised. It was us and them, and neither side was able to even listen to the other without prejudgement.”
Conclusion
We’re at a critical moment in time when the climate and AI crises have merged into the wider polycrisis, which carries the real risk of bringing humanity to its knees. This novel shows a glimpse of what a potential future could look like and acts as a clarion call for humanity to work together to avoid climate catastrophe and algorithmic extinction.
Time isn’t on our side. The individuals running the fossil fuel and tech corporations won’t pull back without being made to do so through regulations. But those regulations won’t be coming anytime soon, given how much these industries spend on lobbying politicians. Data from opensecrets.org shows that the oil and gas industry spent over $3 billion on lobbying in the US alone, between 1998 and 2025. Meanwhile, a report from CNBC shows that the tech industry spent $957 million on lobbying in the US, over the course of just one year in 2023.
Therefore, we need to realise that it will be left to us to push for the change we desperately need. We can get there if we wish to, but it will take a large concerted effort by all of us.
Artificial Wisdom shows why this is both necessary and urgent. This gripping novel is one I highly recommend given that it’s so pertinent to this pivotal moment in history. It’s also unique in that it tackles both the climate and AI crises and shows how they will interact and cause compounding issues, making it increasingly difficult for humanity to tackle one of these problems, never mind both at the same time.
I hope people will read this and take away the idea that change is both urgent and necessary if we wish to maintain a liveable future.
I’ve been writing about the climate emergency since 2016, and the AI crisis since 2023. I write all my own work, without the use of AI. I don’t publish on any other paid platforms, and my blog remains completely free to read. If you’ve found my writing informative and if you’d like to support my work, I’d be really grateful if you did so here. Thank you.
My cli-fi children’s picture book, Nanook and the Melting Arctic is available from Amazon, including Amazon UK and Amazon US. My eco-fiction children’s picture book, Hedgey-A and the Honey Bees about how pesticides affect bees, is available on Amazon’s global stores including Amazon UK and Amazon US.