PRINCETON — Robert Wright, author of the upcoming book "The God Test: Artificial Intelligence and Our Coming Cosmic Reckoning," predicts that artificial intelligence will trigger a major societal shift. The book is scheduled for publication in June 2026.

"When you look at all the fronts — economic, cultural, political, personal, family, psychological and so on — it is going to be an earthquake," Wright said. "That's my prediction. And we better be ready for it."

Wright began experimenting with ChatGPT-4 in 2023. He described his reaction to the technology, saying, "I thought, 'oh sh-t,' It really understands human nature and is capable of putting itself in the perspective of another human being." He noted that the neural network pioneered by Geoffrey Hinton "will kind of reverse engineer the human mind." Wright recalled a past misunderstanding from a 1983 interview with Hinton. "That was my big misunderstanding back in 1983," Wright said. "I was assuming that if it was going to get good at handling language, we would have to implant in the machines the human understanding of the connection between the words and the meaning." He added, "I just did not — I was not remotely close to getting the picture."

In 2025, Wright underwent surgery for throat cancer. During his recovery, he used AI chatbots to interpret an ambiguous MRI report. Anthropic's Claude identified a grammatical error in a radiologist's report that stated "no abnormalities found." "Humans make mistakes," Wright said. "This human made a mistake and he's a doctor, okay, and about a pretty big thing." He said, "The thing doesn't have to be perfect by any means to replace a human, especially given the fact that it's going to be a lot cheaper and faster."