More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity Adam Becker Basic (2025)

Science journalist Adam Becker’s More Everything Forever is a compelling survey of the ideas espoused by a band of futurist thinkers who have championed — and profited from — a boundless faith in the power of artificial intelligence (AI). He relates encounters with the self-proclaimed elders of the field, including futurist and Google engineer Ray Kurzweil, Silicon Valley investor Mark Andreessen and AI theorist Eliezer Yudkowsky, who warns of existential risks posed by artificial intelligence. The result is disturbing, although accurate — as I can attest, as a computer scientist who has interacted with many of the people interviewed in the book.

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The ideas promoted by ‘techno-extremists’ lie on a broad spectrum, yet there are connecting threads. Almost all of these people believe, Becker writes, that most problems can be solved by the application of computer science. And many of them consider that freedom consists of free markets and not much else. Their deepest desire is to transcend all limits in pursuit of eternal growth. Planetary resource limits can be circumvented by space travel, and those imposed by human biology can be sidestepped by uploading one’s mind onto a computer that lasts, potentially, forever.

This ideology of “technological salvation”, as Becker calls it, neatly fits into the logic of a certain strain of capitalism, which might explain its appeal among thought leaders in the tech industry. Engaging with these tech-infused visions is necessary because they are starting to affect how society is governed.

Is humanity’s fate really in the hands of self-anointed visionaries who believe they are the most important and smartest people ever? Becker’s account, although unsettling, is from a less terrifying time than the present. It was written before billionaire businessman Elon Musk took control of the US government and began dismantling its agencies. Perhaps Musk views governance as a relic in a world in which AI is about to either solve all our problems or destroy us all.

Faith in code

Becker is a fine chronicler and a valuable historian. He traces the roots of transhumanism — a movement advocating the use of technology to enhance human capabilities and surpass biological limits — to Christian theology. The possibility of human–machine hybrids has enabled outspoken atheists to imagine their own version of immortality, involving “ascending to the heavens to live forever” by deploying “the legible logic of computer programs”.

He documents several instances in which humanity’s eternal questions — such as how to live a good life or how the mind and body are related — have been repackaged as engineering problems. They add depth to our understanding of this strange moment.

The book’s central message is that there should be more public debate of techno-utopian ideas. For instance, rather than accepting the narrative of a tech elite reshaping governance, communities around the world could instead use information technology merely as a tool to help people collaborate and govern themselves more effectively. Yet, Becker finds it hard to put such arguments to his interviewees, who seem to echo the line from the film The Terminator: “Come with me if you want to live.” The implication: any smart person should realize there is no option but to follow the tech gurus.

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Becker points out that the real goal of advocating these impossible futures is to “expand their power here and now”. As a solution, Becker recommends introducing punitive taxation to, in effect, outlaw billionaires, arguing that concentrated wealth has helped to propel fringe philosophies into the mainstream.