Publisher Angle Books released on Tuesday a book titled "How Should We Live" that it bills as directly asking what remains of humans in the face of AI.

According to the publisher, author Lee Young-hwan (이영환), an emeritus professor in Dongguk University’s economics department, gives AI a name and personality, calling it “Spirity,” and continues dialogues over several months on his relationship with himself, with others and with the world.

The publisher describes the book as asking first not how well humans can handle AI, but where the human place is that AI can never handle. The author stresses that the ability to be conscious, empathise and think about death — “things AI can never calculate” — still belongs to humans. He also highlights that answers produced by AI ultimately reflect the world of the person asking the question. Even with the same AI, he says, entirely different answers come back depending on what is asked and how deeply it is asked.

As he digs into the mind-body problem, the nature of consciousness, and death and worldviews, “Spirity” responds not with the smooth summaries commonly seen in search windows, but with insights that push humans toward higher thought, the author says.

The author says the only way for humans not to become subordinate to machines is not to compete for superiority in intelligence, but to pursue the depth and expansion of consciousness that only humans possess.

In the age of AI, the author’s core message is that the greatest resistance available to us is ultimately not to think like a machine, and that the way to survive is to build one’s own worldview.

The author graduated from Seoul National University’s economics department and received a PhD in economics from the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. From 1987 to 2018, he served as a professor in Dongguk University’s economics department, teaching microeconomics and information economics. Having researched economics throughout his life on the premise of the “rational human,” he has been working since retirement to share with the public the wisdom needed in an era of civilisational transition led by AI.