You and Betty and the nancy's and bills and joes and james will find in the study of science a richer, more rewarding life.

Welcome to Inquiring Minds. I'm Indravis Gontas. This is a podcast that explores the space where science and society collide.

We want to find out what's true, what's left to discover, and why it matters.

We are wrapping up a four-part series on artificial intelligence

and what it means for future humans, future us.

And joining me is Adam Bristol.

Hey, Andrea, it's good to be here again.

So, Adam, you're going to take us home in this series.

And we decided to feature a science fiction writer as kind of the last look forward

into what might happen 100 years in the future

if AI continues to improve and dominate as it has so far. Yeah, and this is an extraordinary

debut novel from a San Francisco-based author named Gary Benger. The book is called Unfettered

Journey. And I'll tell you, it's one of my favorite science fiction novel of 2020.

Wow, that's high praise.

Well, you know, I love science fiction.

I read a lot of science fiction, but I think you know me.

And I don't love fantasy.

Remember when we got the George R.R.

Martin books were gifted to me, and I don't think I read two pages in it. It's just not my thing.

I know. We got the first Game of Thrones book, and I remember this very clearly because it was given to us by a friend of ours, and you didn't even, like, try to read it.

And I was like, what? He gave it to us, and he thought that this was such a great book that, like, one of us has to read it. And I was like, what? He gave it to us. And he thought that this was such a great book that like one of us has to read it. And I was hooked. Yeah, I actually, I feel real

bad about that because our friend is a scientist. He's a, he's a practicing scientist. He's a

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