
What Makes Us Human
An Artificial Intelligence Answers Life's Biggest Questions
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $12.59
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Jasmine Wang
-
Ian S Thomas
About this listen
A groundbreaking endeavor to explore human spirituality through the evolving technology of artificial intelligence
Why are we here? What does it mean to love? How do we overcome suffering? Is happiness truly possible?
For thousands of years, we have turned to the same beloved texts to explore these universal questions—from the Bible and the Tao Te Ching, to the poetry of Rumi and Sappho, to the words of modern-day mystics.
What if you could take all of the wisdom contained in these collective pages and, using the world’s most advanced artificial intelligence, receive the answers?
To create What Makes Us Human?, internationally bestselling poet Iain S. Thomas and globally recognized prodigious researcher and innovator Jasmine Wang prompted the world’s most advanced AI, GPT-3, with a wealth of humanity’s most cherished works. Then they asked GPT-3 our most pressing questions about life.
Contained in this audiobook are the conversations and exchanges that followed.
A bold and daring experiment, What Makes Us Human? is a contemporary exploration of spirituality that will inspire you, move you, and give you a new understanding of what makes us humans, humans.
©2022 Jasmine Wang, Iain S. Thomas, and GPT-3 (P)2022 Sounds TrueListeners also enjoyed...
-
The Truth of You
- Poetry About Love, Life, Joy, and Sadness
- By: Iain S. Thomas
- Narrated by: Iain S. Thomas
- Length: 1 hr and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
I want you to know that I see you. I want you to know that even if no one else does, even if you are a ghost in this bookshop, or just the static floating across the screen of your computer, wherever you’re reading this, I see you. I see you in the dark and I see you in the grey. I see you as a story, as words I have spoken or may yet speak. Maybe only in a memory or a dream. I see your hands and your arms and your body and your legs and your face and I see what you have been and what you will be.
-
-
Exelente
- By florencia linares on 06-09-24
By: Iain S. Thomas
-
I Wrote This for You
- Please Listen
- By: Iain S. Thomas
- Narrated by: Iain S. Thomas
- Length: 3 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
I Wrote This for You: Please Listen focuses on a different facet of life, love, loss, beginnings, and endings. This audio project inspired by the original book weaves the poetry into a never-before heard holistic narrative.
-
-
Absolutely beautiful
- By Bailey Rose on 11-28-23
By: Iain S. Thomas
-
How We Live Is How We Die
- By: Pema Chödrön
- Narrated by: Olivia Darnley
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As much as we might try to resist, endings happen in every moment—the end of a breath, the end of a day, the end of a relationship, and ultimately the end of life. And accompanying each ending is a beginning, though it may be unclear what the beginning holds. In How We Live Is How We Die, Pema Chödrön shares her wisdom for working with this flow of life—learning to live with ease, joy, and compassion through uncertainty, embracing new beginnings, and ultimately preparing for death with curiosity and openness rather than fear.
-
-
Dealing with disappointment!
- By Sabine Blanchard on 10-19-22
By: Pema Chödrön
-
How to Know a Person
- The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
- By: David Brooks
- Narrated by: David Brooks
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As David Brooks observes, “There is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or society: the ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen—to accurately know another person, to let them feel valued, heard, and understood.” And yet we humans don’t do this well. All around us are people who feel invisible, unseen, misunderstood. In How to Know a Person, Brooks sets out to help us do better, posing questions that are essential for all of us: If you want to know a person, what kind of attention should you cast on them?
-
-
A book he was ready to write
- By Adam Shields on 11-17-23
By: David Brooks
-
Attuned
- Practicing Interdependence to Heal Our Trauma—and Our World
- By: Thomas Hübl, Julie Avritt
- Narrated by: Stacy Carolan
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We are all interconnected—and dependent on each other to shape the world in which we live. Yet even though technology has allowed us to digitally share our lives with more people than ever, the result has been a growing pattern of personal isolation, alienation, and division. Why is this? “We are seeing the manifestation of collective trauma,” says luminary Thomas Hübl, who has reached thousands of people around the world through his teachings on mysticism and healing.
-
-
The reader obstructs comprehension
- By James K. Freda on 10-31-24
By: Thomas Hübl, and others
-
Notes on Complexity
- By: Neil Theise
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 4 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nothing in the universe is more complex than life. Throughout the skies, in oceans, and across lands, life is endlessly on the move. In its myriad forms—from cells to human beings, social structures, and ecosystems—life is open-ended, evolving, unpredictable, yet adaptive and self-sustaining. Complexity theory addresses the mysteries that animate science, philosophy, and metaphysics: how this teeming array of existence, from the infinitesimal to the infinite, is in fact a seamless living whole and what our place, as conscious beings, is within it.
-
-
Only the first couple chapters are about complexity
- By washington on 09-21-23
By: Neil Theise
-
The Truth of You
- Poetry About Love, Life, Joy, and Sadness
- By: Iain S. Thomas
- Narrated by: Iain S. Thomas
- Length: 1 hr and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
I want you to know that I see you. I want you to know that even if no one else does, even if you are a ghost in this bookshop, or just the static floating across the screen of your computer, wherever you’re reading this, I see you. I see you in the dark and I see you in the grey. I see you as a story, as words I have spoken or may yet speak. Maybe only in a memory or a dream. I see your hands and your arms and your body and your legs and your face and I see what you have been and what you will be.
-
-
Exelente
- By florencia linares on 06-09-24
By: Iain S. Thomas
-
I Wrote This for You
- Please Listen
- By: Iain S. Thomas
- Narrated by: Iain S. Thomas
- Length: 3 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
I Wrote This for You: Please Listen focuses on a different facet of life, love, loss, beginnings, and endings. This audio project inspired by the original book weaves the poetry into a never-before heard holistic narrative.
-
-
Absolutely beautiful
- By Bailey Rose on 11-28-23
By: Iain S. Thomas
-
How We Live Is How We Die
- By: Pema Chödrön
- Narrated by: Olivia Darnley
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As much as we might try to resist, endings happen in every moment—the end of a breath, the end of a day, the end of a relationship, and ultimately the end of life. And accompanying each ending is a beginning, though it may be unclear what the beginning holds. In How We Live Is How We Die, Pema Chödrön shares her wisdom for working with this flow of life—learning to live with ease, joy, and compassion through uncertainty, embracing new beginnings, and ultimately preparing for death with curiosity and openness rather than fear.
-
-
Dealing with disappointment!
- By Sabine Blanchard on 10-19-22
By: Pema Chödrön
-
How to Know a Person
- The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
- By: David Brooks
- Narrated by: David Brooks
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As David Brooks observes, “There is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or society: the ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen—to accurately know another person, to let them feel valued, heard, and understood.” And yet we humans don’t do this well. All around us are people who feel invisible, unseen, misunderstood. In How to Know a Person, Brooks sets out to help us do better, posing questions that are essential for all of us: If you want to know a person, what kind of attention should you cast on them?
-
-
A book he was ready to write
- By Adam Shields on 11-17-23
By: David Brooks
-
Attuned
- Practicing Interdependence to Heal Our Trauma—and Our World
- By: Thomas Hübl, Julie Avritt
- Narrated by: Stacy Carolan
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We are all interconnected—and dependent on each other to shape the world in which we live. Yet even though technology has allowed us to digitally share our lives with more people than ever, the result has been a growing pattern of personal isolation, alienation, and division. Why is this? “We are seeing the manifestation of collective trauma,” says luminary Thomas Hübl, who has reached thousands of people around the world through his teachings on mysticism and healing.
-
-
The reader obstructs comprehension
- By James K. Freda on 10-31-24
By: Thomas Hübl, and others
-
Notes on Complexity
- By: Neil Theise
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 4 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nothing in the universe is more complex than life. Throughout the skies, in oceans, and across lands, life is endlessly on the move. In its myriad forms—from cells to human beings, social structures, and ecosystems—life is open-ended, evolving, unpredictable, yet adaptive and self-sustaining. Complexity theory addresses the mysteries that animate science, philosophy, and metaphysics: how this teeming array of existence, from the infinitesimal to the infinite, is in fact a seamless living whole and what our place, as conscious beings, is within it.
-
-
Only the first couple chapters are about complexity
- By washington on 09-21-23
By: Neil Theise
-
The Creative Act
- A Way of Being
- By: Rick Rubin
- Narrated by: Rick Rubin
- Length: 5 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Many famed music producers are known for a particular sound that has its day. Rick Rubin is known for something else: creating a space where artists of all different genres and traditions can home in on who they really are and what they really offer. He has made a practice of helping people transcend their self-imposed expectations in order to reconnect with a state of innocence from which the surprising becomes inevitable. Over the years, he has learned that being an artist isn’t about your specific output, it’s about your relationship to the world.
-
-
Rick is Art
- By Ira Henke on 01-17-23
By: Rick Rubin
-
Mindfulness
- Six Guided Practices for Awakening
- By: Joseph Goldstein
- Narrated by: Joseph Goldstein
- Length: 2 hrs and 31 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The profound techniques of Vipassana (or insight meditation) are all rooted in the Satipatthana Sutta, the Buddha's practice-oriented teaching on the four foundations of mindfulness. With Mindfulness, Joseph Goldstein brings you a series of core teachings and guided practices for "looking directly at the nature of the mind and body, at how suffering is created, and how we can awaken and be free."
-
-
Life changing
- By Ravi on 08-01-15
By: Joseph Goldstein
-
The Myth of Normal
- Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture
- By: Gabor Maté MD, Daniel Maté
- Narrated by: Daniel Maté
- Length: 18 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this revolutionary book, renowned physician Gabor Maté eloquently dissects how in Western countries that pride themselves on their healthcare systems, chronic illness and general ill health are on the rise. Nearly 70 percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug; more than half take two. In Canada, every fifth person has high blood pressure. In Europe, hypertension is diagnosed in more than 30 percent of the population. And everywhere, adolescent mental illness is on the rise. So what is really “normal” when it comes to health?
-
-
Bought book after hearing podcast...
- By Adrian on 09-14-22
By: Gabor Maté MD, and others
-
Clear Thinking
- Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results
- By: Shane Parrish
- Narrated by: Will Damron, Shane Parrish
- Length: 6 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
You might believe you’re thinking clearly in the moments that matter most. But in all likelihood, when the pressure is on, you won’t be thinking at all. And your subsequent actions will inevitably move you further from the results you ultimately seek—love, belonging, success, wealth, victory. According to Farnam Street founder Shane Parrish, we must get better at recognizing these opportunities for what they are, and deploying our cognitive ability in order to achieve the life we want.
-
-
It Feels Like a Classic - Seven Habits Good
- By Tyler L on 11-02-23
By: Shane Parrish
-
Fundamentals
- Ten Keys to Reality
- By: Frank Wilczek
- Narrated by: Sean Patrick Hopkins, Frank Wilczek
- Length: 7 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of our great contemporary scientists reveals the 10 profound insights that illuminate what everyone should know about the physical world.
-
-
Is this for kindergarteners?
- By James S. on 01-24-21
By: Frank Wilczek
-
Helgoland
- Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution
- By: Carlo Rovelli, Erica Segre - translator, Simon Carnell - translator
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 4 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of the world's most renowned theoretical physicists, Carlo Rovelli has entranced millions of readers with his singular perspective on the cosmos. In Helgoland, he examines the enduring enigma of quantum theory. The quantum world Rovelli describes is as beautiful as it is unnerving. Helgoland is a treeless island in the North Sea where the 23-year-old Werner Heisenberg made the crucial breakthrough for the creation of quantum mechanics, setting off a century of scientific revolution.
-
-
The cat is not sleeping
- By Anonymous on 05-30-21
By: Carlo Rovelli, and others
-
IntraConnected
- MWe (Me + We) as the Integration of Self, Identity, and Belonging
- By: Daniel J. Siegel MD
- Narrated by: Daniel J. Siegel MD
- Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Both a personal and general meditation on identity and belonging, Daniel J. Siegel’s book combines personal reflections with scientific discussions of how the mind, brain, and our relationships shape who we are. Weaving the internal and external, the subjective and objective, IntraConnected reveals how our culture may give us a message of separation as a solo, isolated self, but a wider perspective unveils that who we are may be something more―broader than the brain, bigger even than the body―and fundamental to social systems and the natural world.
-
-
Brilliantly integrated & timely
- By ChiDoc on 01-17-23
-
Heart Minded
- How to Hold Yourself and Others in Love
- By: Sarah Blondin
- Narrated by: Sarah Blondin
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A treasury of meditations for living from your heart - from a top teacher. With poetic brilliance and skillful instruction, renowned teacher Sarah Blondin brings you a treasury of meditations and spiritual teachings to help you detach from your busy mind and tune into your feeling heart. As the students of her popular online trainings can attest, these simple and powerful practices can instantly bring you into a deeper connection with yourself and others. And you can go back to these meditations whenever you feel overwhelmed, disconnected, or afraid.
-
-
Get this book now
- By Anonymous User on 10-02-20
By: Sarah Blondin
-
Change Your Thoughts—Change Your Life
- Living the Wisdom of the Tao
- By: Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
- Narrated by: Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Five hundred years before the birth of Jesus, a God-realized being named Lao-tzu in ancient China dictated 81 verses, which are regarded by many as the ultimate commentary on the nature of our existence. The classic text of these 81 verses, called the Tao Te Ching or the Great Way, offers advice and guidance that is balanced, moral, spiritual, and always concerned with working for the good.
-
-
Less is more
- By CAT on 06-25-08
-
Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words
- By: David Whyte
- Narrated by: David Whyte
- Length: 4 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With the imagery of a poet and the reflection of a philosopher, David Whyte turns his attention to 52 ordinary words, each its own particular doorway into the underlying currents of human life. Beginning with "Alone" and closing with "Work", each chapter is a meditation on meaning and context, an invitation to shift and broaden our perspectives on the inevitable vicissitudes of life: pain and joy, honesty and anger, confession and vulnerability, the experience of feeling besieged and the desire to run away from it all.
-
-
Timely
- By Patrick Cantrell on 10-17-20
By: David Whyte
-
Everyday Grace
- By: Marianne Williamson
- Narrated by: Marianne Williamson
- Length: 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What do your spiritual convictions have to do with traffic jams, job anxiety, reading the newspaper, or arguing with your spouse? Everything, according to Marianne Williamson. It is the way we live in our everyday world that determines the shape of who we are.
-
-
Not the book
- By DIANE on 05-06-13
-
Tears to Triumph
- The Spiritual Journey from Suffering to Enlightenment
- By: Marianne Williamson
- Narrated by: Marianne Williamson
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Marianne Williamson is a best-selling author, a world-renowned teacher, and one of the most important spiritual voices of our time. In Tears to Triumph, she argues that we - as a culture and as individuals - have learned to avoid facing pain. By doing so we are neglecting the spiritual work of healing. Instead of allowing ourselves to embrace our hurt, we numb it, medicate it, dismiss it, or otherwise divert our attention so that we never have to face it.
-
-
Beautiful. An absolute MUST read.
- By freedom1 on 06-29-16
Critic reviews
“This profoundly illuminating text on where we stand in the great arc of artificial intelligence is stunningly beautiful and inspired. A touching, nuanced, and beautiful reverie of poetic collaboration.”—BT, GRAMMY®-nominated musician and technologist
“Iain S. Thomas and Jasmine Wang have striven to garner advice from a robot brain, expecting to receive mechanized platitudes—and yet these writers discover the soulfulness of a wise poet, who might someday walk beside us, perhaps even sprinting past us, on our hike up the slopes of Parnassus.”—Christian Bök, experimental poet, author of Eunoia, and Griffin Poetry Prize winner
What listeners say about What Makes Us Human
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Romulus
- 03-24-23
quite surprising considering the output from the A
I think this is going to surprise a lot of people. My experience with artificial intelligence has been much different, and it really in this situation sort of acts as a guru, for instance Gandhi. interesting and existential and philosophical answers to the great questions asked. highly recommended.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Patrick Terry
- 01-09-23
Understandable and Insightful.
A nice conceptual and understandable insight on AI and being human. A really nice series of questions to explore.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Ashely Jenkins
- 08-03-23
Compelling and intelligently provacative
Honestly, once I listened to the AI introduction I was hooked. I was genuinely moved.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- BobbyDz
- 11-02-22
BobbyDz
This is wonderful human experience. In an age when we can’t sort through all of the information that bombards us, this look at life at our evolutionary moment is a wonderful blessing. I will come back to this again and again for crisp insights and vivid reminders of what makes me human.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- IB
- 03-30-23
Inspiring
Has Surprisingly deep and spiritual answers. I Enjoyed it a lot. Looking forward to hear more.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Nedra Fabito
- 11-19-22
Absolutely Fascinating
As a seeker who fully engages with modern culture and views open-mindedness, change and creativity as essential to our journey, I am speechless. The idea of such truthful knowledge without human feelings and emotions makes me wonder if this is just as it is.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!