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We Are as Gods: A Survival Guide for the Age of Abundance
From the
New York Times
bestselling authors of
Abundance
,
Bold
, and
The Future Is Faster Than You Think
comes a powerful new guide to navigating—and flourishing in—a world of exponential change.
Across every domain of life, yesterday’s miracles are becoming today’s tools. AI diagnoses diseases and writes code. Biotech startups are growing meat without animals. Autonomous robots are transforming agriculture, manufacturing, and healthcare. These aren’t forecasts—they’re facts.
We’ve entered the Age of Abundance.
But while technology is accelerating at breakneck speed, our brains are struggling to keep up. Hardwired for a world of scarcity, we’re overwhelmed by information, battered by uncertainty, and distracted by apocalyptic headlines. The result? A growing mismatch between the power at our fingertips and our ability to use it well.
Age of Abundance is a survival guide for this pivotal moment. With gripping stories, cutting-edge data, and hard-won insights from the front lines of innovation, Diamandis and Kotler show how exponential technologies are rewriting the rules of possibility—and how each of us must evolve to keep pace. This is a playbook for turning anxiety into agency and isolation into collaboration—at a global scale.
Abundance is here. Are you ready?
Across every domain of life, yesterday’s miracles are becoming today’s tools. AI diagnoses diseases and writes code. Biotech startups are growing meat without animals. Autonomous robots are transforming agriculture, manufacturing, and healthcare. These aren’t forecasts—they’re facts.
We’ve entered the Age of Abundance.
But while technology is accelerating at breakneck speed, our brains are struggling to keep up. Hardwired for a world of scarcity, we’re overwhelmed by information, battered by uncertainty, and distracted by apocalyptic headlines. The result? A growing mismatch between the power at our fingertips and our ability to use it well.
Age of Abundance is a survival guide for this pivotal moment. With gripping stories, cutting-edge data, and hard-won insights from the front lines of innovation, Diamandis and Kotler show how exponential technologies are rewriting the rules of possibility—and how each of us must evolve to keep pace. This is a playbook for turning anxiety into agency and isolation into collaboration—at a global scale.
Abundance is here. Are you ready?
- GenresNonfiction
320 pages, Hardcover
Published April 14, 2026
22 people are currently reading
149 people want to read
About the author
Peter H. Diamandis
31 books758 followersDr. Peter H. Diamandis is an international pioneer in the fields of innovation, incentive competitions and commercial space. In 2014 he was named one of "The World’s 50 Greatest Leaders" – by Fortune Magazine.
In the field of Innovation, Diamandis is Founder and Executive Chairman of the XPRIZE Foundation, best known for its $10 million Ansari XPRIZE for private spaceflight.
Diamandis is also the Co-Founder and Vice-Chairman of Human Longevity Inc. (HLI), a genomics and cell therapy-based diagnostic and therapeutic company focused on extending the healthy human lifespan. He is also the Executive Founder of Singularity University, a graduate-level Silicon Valley institution that studies exponentially growing technologies, their ability to transform industries and solve humanity’s grand challenges.
In the field of commercial space, Diamandis is Co-Founder/Co-Chairman of Planetary Resources, a company designing spacecraft to enable the detection and prospecting of asteroid for precious materials. He is also the Co-Founder of Space Adventures and Zero-Gravity Corporation.
Diamandis is the New York Times Bestselling author of Abundance – The Future Is Better Than You Think and BOLD – How to go Big, Create Wealth & Impact the World.
He earned an undergraduate degree in Molecular Genetics and a graduate degree in Aerospace Engineering from MIT, and received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School.
Diamandis’ mission is to open the space frontier for humanity. His personal motto is: "The best way to predict the future is to create it yourself."
In 2016, the Greek Government honored him by issuing a 1.2 Euro stamp into circulation. Also in 2016, the book How To Make A Spaceship – A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race, and the Birth of Private Spaceflight, Peter’s biography and the story of the XPRIZE was written by Julian Guthrie with a Foreword by Richard Branson and an Afterword by Prof. Stephen Hawking.
In the field of Innovation, Diamandis is Founder and Executive Chairman of the XPRIZE Foundation, best known for its $10 million Ansari XPRIZE for private spaceflight.
Diamandis is also the Co-Founder and Vice-Chairman of Human Longevity Inc. (HLI), a genomics and cell therapy-based diagnostic and therapeutic company focused on extending the healthy human lifespan. He is also the Executive Founder of Singularity University, a graduate-level Silicon Valley institution that studies exponentially growing technologies, their ability to transform industries and solve humanity’s grand challenges.
In the field of commercial space, Diamandis is Co-Founder/Co-Chairman of Planetary Resources, a company designing spacecraft to enable the detection and prospecting of asteroid for precious materials. He is also the Co-Founder of Space Adventures and Zero-Gravity Corporation.
Diamandis is the New York Times Bestselling author of Abundance – The Future Is Better Than You Think and BOLD – How to go Big, Create Wealth & Impact the World.
He earned an undergraduate degree in Molecular Genetics and a graduate degree in Aerospace Engineering from MIT, and received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School.
Diamandis’ mission is to open the space frontier for humanity. His personal motto is: "The best way to predict the future is to create it yourself."
In 2016, the Greek Government honored him by issuing a 1.2 Euro stamp into circulation. Also in 2016, the book How To Make A Spaceship – A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race, and the Birth of Private Spaceflight, Peter’s biography and the story of the XPRIZE was written by Julian Guthrie with a Foreword by Richard Branson and an Afterword by Prof. Stephen Hawking.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
April 25, 2026
If optimism were a controlled substance, We Are As Gods would require a prescription and careful monitoring. Fortunately, Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler dispense it freely, and with just enough self-awareness to keep it from feeling like a late-night infomercial for the future.
This is not blind cheerleading. It is a curated tour of human progress that reminds you, with some persistence, that we are very good at solving problems once we decide they are worth solving. Diamandis and Kotler lean into the long arc of history, contrasting the grim baseline of the past with the astonishing trajectory of the present. By the time you’ve been reminded how recently disease, famine, and ignorance were the default settings of civilization, it becomes harder to indulge in the modern hobby of assuming everything is getting worse.
And yet, credit where it is due, the book does not float off into techno-utopian orbit. Interspersed among the triumphs are reality checks, the kind that politely tap you on the shoulder and say, “Yes, but…” The challenges are real: uneven access, unintended consequences, and the ever-present risk that human nature does not upgrade at quite the same pace as human technology. The authors acknowledge these without losing momentum, which is no small feat. It is optimism with a seatbelt.
What elevates the book is its comparative perspective. Rather than simply declaring that things are better, it shows its work. The reader is invited to measure today against yesterday, not against some imagined perfection that never existed. This alone is a refreshing corrective in an era that often judges progress against fantasy rather than history.
There is also a quiet, almost mischievous undercurrent running through the narrative: the suggestion that many of our current anxieties might look faintly ridiculous in hindsight. Not because they are trivial, but because they are symptoms of a world that has already solved problems so large that we now have the luxury of worrying about more abstract ones.
In short, this is a book that dares to argue that humanity is not on the brink of collapse, but on the edge of possibility. It does so with enthusiasm, a fair amount of evidence, and just enough acknowledgment of reality to avoid sounding like it was written by a motivational poster.
You may not agree with every conclusion, but you will finish the book slightly more reluctant to declare the present an unmitigated disaster. In today’s intellectual climate, that alone feels almost rebellious.
This is not blind cheerleading. It is a curated tour of human progress that reminds you, with some persistence, that we are very good at solving problems once we decide they are worth solving. Diamandis and Kotler lean into the long arc of history, contrasting the grim baseline of the past with the astonishing trajectory of the present. By the time you’ve been reminded how recently disease, famine, and ignorance were the default settings of civilization, it becomes harder to indulge in the modern hobby of assuming everything is getting worse.
And yet, credit where it is due, the book does not float off into techno-utopian orbit. Interspersed among the triumphs are reality checks, the kind that politely tap you on the shoulder and say, “Yes, but…” The challenges are real: uneven access, unintended consequences, and the ever-present risk that human nature does not upgrade at quite the same pace as human technology. The authors acknowledge these without losing momentum, which is no small feat. It is optimism with a seatbelt.
What elevates the book is its comparative perspective. Rather than simply declaring that things are better, it shows its work. The reader is invited to measure today against yesterday, not against some imagined perfection that never existed. This alone is a refreshing corrective in an era that often judges progress against fantasy rather than history.
There is also a quiet, almost mischievous undercurrent running through the narrative: the suggestion that many of our current anxieties might look faintly ridiculous in hindsight. Not because they are trivial, but because they are symptoms of a world that has already solved problems so large that we now have the luxury of worrying about more abstract ones.
In short, this is a book that dares to argue that humanity is not on the brink of collapse, but on the edge of possibility. It does so with enthusiasm, a fair amount of evidence, and just enough acknowledgment of reality to avoid sounding like it was written by a motivational poster.
You may not agree with every conclusion, but you will finish the book slightly more reluctant to declare the present an unmitigated disaster. In today’s intellectual climate, that alone feels almost rebellious.
Review of advance copy received from Author
We Are as Gods argues that we now live in a world where technology has quietly given ordinary people godlike powers, from AI and robotics to biotech and planetary-scale climate tools, and that the real bottleneck is not the tech itself but our ability to think clearly, emotionally regulate, and act wisely at this new speed. The book walks through how exponential technologies created real material abundance, how our Stone Age brains mis-handle this flood of power and information, and then offers a psychological survival guide that mixes neuroscience, game design, and grand challenges to help readers build agency, meaning, and resilience in what the authors call an age of abundance.
The book is energizing. The stories are vivid and sticky. The opening riff that compares modern breakthroughs to biblical miracles lands hard, and it actually made me pause and look at my phone with fresh eyes. The structure is clear. Part 1 sets the stage, Part 2 shows real companies and projects surfing the waves, and Part 3 shifts into a self-help gear that feels more intimate and practical. I liked the way authors Diamandis and Kotler weave myth, cognitive science, and startup lore. The analogies help. Comparing information overload to a wrecking ball hitting our nervous system is simple, and it rings true. Their explanation of bias and attention feels grounded, and it helped me name things I only had a fuzzy feeling about before.
I enjoyed how bold the style is. The prose comes at you fast, like a live keynote talk poured straight onto the page, and it keeps the energy high. The constant drumbeat of examples gives the book a sense of momentum. Miracle after miracle, chart after chart, and it all adds to this feeling that you are racing through a highlight reel of the future. I still found myself curious to explore a few of the tougher stories, especially in the darker chapters where surveillance, bio risk, and inequality show up and then get lifted by the next hopeful case study. Their strong faith in entrepreneurs and incentive prizes comes across as a clear, confident stance, and while I could imagine an even deeper dive into policy and power, I liked that those themes are at least present, even if they stay mostly in the wings. I finished those sections impressed by the ingenuity on display and energized by the big questions that remain about who benefits, who pays the price, and how we can guide abundance so it feels intentional, fair, and shared.
The discussion of learned helplessness, attention collapse, and victim mindset resonated with me personally. I recognized my own doom scrolling, my own habit of telling myself the future is something that just happens to me. The tools they offer in the final chapters are not completely new, but the way they frame them inside this huge story of accelerating change gave them more weight for me. Agency, awe, and grand challenges sound like big abstract words. Here they come with clear explanations, concrete examples, and a kind of gentle shove that says: you do not get to sit this era out.
I would recommend We Are as Gods to readers who sit at the intersection of technology, leadership, and personal development, and who want a hopeful but not naive story about the next few decades. If you are a founder, an executive, a policy thinker, or simply someone feeling overwhelmed by AI and nonstop change, this book will give you language, metaphors, and mental models that can help you feel less like a victim of the future and more like an active participant. If you want a big, loud, data-heavy pep talk wrapped around some solid psychological advice, this is a very timely read.
The book is energizing. The stories are vivid and sticky. The opening riff that compares modern breakthroughs to biblical miracles lands hard, and it actually made me pause and look at my phone with fresh eyes. The structure is clear. Part 1 sets the stage, Part 2 shows real companies and projects surfing the waves, and Part 3 shifts into a self-help gear that feels more intimate and practical. I liked the way authors Diamandis and Kotler weave myth, cognitive science, and startup lore. The analogies help. Comparing information overload to a wrecking ball hitting our nervous system is simple, and it rings true. Their explanation of bias and attention feels grounded, and it helped me name things I only had a fuzzy feeling about before.
I enjoyed how bold the style is. The prose comes at you fast, like a live keynote talk poured straight onto the page, and it keeps the energy high. The constant drumbeat of examples gives the book a sense of momentum. Miracle after miracle, chart after chart, and it all adds to this feeling that you are racing through a highlight reel of the future. I still found myself curious to explore a few of the tougher stories, especially in the darker chapters where surveillance, bio risk, and inequality show up and then get lifted by the next hopeful case study. Their strong faith in entrepreneurs and incentive prizes comes across as a clear, confident stance, and while I could imagine an even deeper dive into policy and power, I liked that those themes are at least present, even if they stay mostly in the wings. I finished those sections impressed by the ingenuity on display and energized by the big questions that remain about who benefits, who pays the price, and how we can guide abundance so it feels intentional, fair, and shared.
The discussion of learned helplessness, attention collapse, and victim mindset resonated with me personally. I recognized my own doom scrolling, my own habit of telling myself the future is something that just happens to me. The tools they offer in the final chapters are not completely new, but the way they frame them inside this huge story of accelerating change gave them more weight for me. Agency, awe, and grand challenges sound like big abstract words. Here they come with clear explanations, concrete examples, and a kind of gentle shove that says: you do not get to sit this era out.
I would recommend We Are as Gods to readers who sit at the intersection of technology, leadership, and personal development, and who want a hopeful but not naive story about the next few decades. If you are a founder, an executive, a policy thinker, or simply someone feeling overwhelmed by AI and nonstop change, this book will give you language, metaphors, and mental models that can help you feel less like a victim of the future and more like an active participant. If you want a big, loud, data-heavy pep talk wrapped around some solid psychological advice, this is a very timely read.
April 18, 2026
I was most amused by one of the paragraphs about self driving cars and future of work. Authors say that taxi drivers should not fear being replaced by a self driving car. Instead they should embrace the future and rejoice as they buy the self driving car and it earns money for them. There are too many levels of idiocy in that single paragraph to debate all of them here but I'd like to point out that if the only thing the taxi driver has to offer is his capital to purchase a self driving car then I imagine investors with billions of dollars like the author can quite successfully out compete him by efficiency of scale alone.
This book was written by or with the help of chatgpt. It constantly reuses common chatgpt patterns (at least common in current models) which were not present in the authors' previous books. For that alone they deserve ridicule. One of the chapters is about the risk of over reliance on chatgpt and that instead of getting chatgpt to do your work you should use it to teach you so you can do it yourself. I hope that paragraph was also written by AI but that one didn't have any tell-tale signs.
This book was written by or with the help of chatgpt. It constantly reuses common chatgpt patterns (at least common in current models) which were not present in the authors' previous books. For that alone they deserve ridicule. One of the chapters is about the risk of over reliance on chatgpt and that instead of getting chatgpt to do your work you should use it to teach you so you can do it yourself. I hope that paragraph was also written by AI but that one didn't have any tell-tale signs.
April 25, 2026
Great book as a high level overview on the pro’s and con’s of AI. Tied in with the crucial remembrance of what it means to be human. Like anything, how you view AI as a threat or a driver is up to you.
Perhaps poorer reviews are by those may-sayers, no matter what is written. Or by people deeply involved in AI and this is too simplistic. Or by those who miss the fundamentals of consciousness and humanity.
For me, it hit the mark as a consolidation of where we are at. It’s hard to believe it’s only 14 years since Abundance was written.
I’ve enjoyed Peter’s writing over the years as a marker in time and predictions of where we are going if we stay on the right side of the track.
Perhaps poorer reviews are by those may-sayers, no matter what is written. Or by people deeply involved in AI and this is too simplistic. Or by those who miss the fundamentals of consciousness and humanity.
For me, it hit the mark as a consolidation of where we are at. It’s hard to believe it’s only 14 years since Abundance was written.
I’ve enjoyed Peter’s writing over the years as a marker in time and predictions of where we are going if we stay on the right side of the track.
April 21, 2026
Accessible and engaging, grounding its argument in technological history and citing important figures outside technology in making its argument. Balances exuberance with caution (though leaning towards exuberance). The last chapter "The Paradise Paradox" is the best chapter in the book. Its "Ten Commandments for AI-Augmented Creativity" are a clear road forward.
[I was given a copy of the book by one of the authors.]
[I was given a copy of the book by one of the authors.]
April 20, 2026
This is a relatively quick and engaging read that brings the emerging age of AI to life. Some of the authors’ predictions will likely prove to be either overstated or understated over time. Still, they make a compelling case through facts, trends, and stories that the AI era may be the most consequential period in human history.
April 22, 2026
An important and timely read
May 4, 2026
Once again, another home run for this team of authors. Love their podcast too.
May 7, 2026
Well written book on the future by my friends Peter and Steven.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews