The End of Knowledge a book by David Vivancos Buy on Amazon

David Vivancos

The End of Knowledge

Do you imagine a world with all human knowledge delegated to machines?

Buy on Amazon Read chapter 1 free

Paperback, Kindle and a 4 h 47 min audiobook narrated by the author. Also in Spanish as El fin del conocimiento.

We have always been the ones who knew.

Knowledge made us. Every tool, every society and every science came from humans gathering it, storing it and passing it on. That link is now being handed to machines.

The End of Knowledge follows the hand-over step by step, from knowledge to data, from data to AI, and from AI to automation, and asks the question we keep postponing: what is left for humans on the other side, in work, in education and in the way we understand ourselves?

  • Nine chaptersin four parts, from the history of knowledge to the dilemma ahead
  • 2023first published, part of the Artificiology trilogy since 2025
  • 4 h 47 minaudiobook, read by the author
  • Two languagesEnglish and Spanish editions
Watercolor illustration of small colorful books tumbling through the air like leaves
On the cover, knowledge grows on a tree as books. Here it starts to blow away.

Nine chapters, one question.

The book moves from the past to the future in four parts. Each chapter closes a link in the chain that used to tie knowledge to humans.

See the full contents (PDF)

  1. Part I. Knowing the past

    1. 1

      No Knowledge?

      The history of knowledge; knowledge versus wisdom; how we store it, use it and transmit it; knowledge, work and society.

    2. 2

      Knowledge is Power

      The foundations of societies; humans with humans and with nature; the quest for power, keeping it, and the inheritance.

  2. Part II. Making the present

    1. 3

      From Knowledge to Data

      The demise of paper; the bit; your data and my data; the business of data; who owns it; no data, no knowledge; bad knowledge.

    2. 4

      From Data to AI

      The seasons of AI; from analytics to AI; the brain of AI; I talk to AI; do I trust my AI?

    3. 5

      From AI to Automation

      Helping humans, augmenting humans, replacing humans; is it just a tool?; automate or be automated.

  3. Part III. Imagining the future

    1. 6

      From Automation to The End of Knowledge

      The broken links; automated humans; the automated world; the full automation; the Oracle.

    2. 7

      The Last (Human) Knowledge

      Measuring knowledge; the missing knowledge; the limits of the knowledgeable; accelerating acquisition; giving up knowledge.

    3. 8

      The End of Education?

      The human timeline; from education to educations; data and educations; lifelong knowledge; the demise of human universities?

  4. Part IV. Seeking for solutions

    1. 9

      We have a dilemma

      Creating scenarios; let's do nothing?; speed versus acceleration; what we need to give up; what we can win.

Try it before you buy it.

A short video summary of the book. Loads from YouTube only when you press play.

  • Read chapter 1 on the web

    The complete first chapter, "No Knowledge?", in an illustrated web edition. No sign-up.

    Open chapter 1

  • Download the sample

    The introduction and full table of contents as a PDF (1.4 MB).

    Get the PDF

  • Listen to a preview

    The audiobook is narrated by David Vivancos himself. Sample it on Audible before you decide.

    Open on Audible
Hands warming by a fire, illustration from chapter 1 An elder reading to children under a tree, illustration from chapter 1 A grand old library, illustration from chapter 1 Astronomers with a telescope under a night sky, illustration from chapter 1 A scholar's workshop with globes and instruments, illustration from chapter 1 A future city with question marks, illustration from chapter 1
Illustrations from the web edition of chapter 1.

Get the book.

Choose the format you read in. Every edition has the same nine chapters.

  • Paperback

    Printed edition, shipped by Amazon worldwide.

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  • Kindle

    Read on any Kindle device or app, delivered in seconds.

    Buy on Amazon

  • Audiobook

    4 hours 47 minutes, narrated by the author.

    Listen on Audible

  • El fin del conocimiento

    The Spanish edition, with its own site and sample.

    Spanish edition

Amazon shows the edition and price for your country once you open the page.

The first book of the Artificiology trilogy.

Since July 2025, The End of Knowledge opens a trilogy about the artificial beings we are building: first their minds, then their bodies, then the societies we will share with them.

Artificiology is also a platform where David Vivancos tracks the progress of machines toward embodied general intelligence across 144 live metrics. Membership includes the whole trilogy in PDF.

Explore Artificiology

Bought the book? You get 20% off the annual Artificiology membership (not cumulative). Write to E-AGI@artificiology.com with your order.

  1. The End of KnowledgeBook one, 2023. The minds of machines.

  2. E-AGIBook two. Embodied Artificial General Intelligence: the bodies of machines.

  3. ArtificracyBook three, 2025. When machines become citizens: the societies we will share.

Eight Knowledge Vaults, free to explore.

While writing the book, David Vivancos mapped the talks, lectures and interviews that shaped today's AI. Each vault is a visual map you can wander through: every tile is a talk. How the vaults were made.

Once a vault has loaded, press Tab to filter it by topic.

David Vivancos

Written from inside the revolution.

David Vivancos has spent three decades on the front line of artificial intelligence: as an entrepreneur since 1995, as a founder of five startups, and as the creator of MindBigData, the world's largest open dataset of brain signals.

He calls his method techno-anthropology: going back to see how clever humans mastered their environment and their times, and following those threads into the machines we are building now. He has lectured at more than 500 conferences across Europe and the United States, advises CEOs on the transition to an automated world, and is the author of seven books and the Encyclopedia of Lost Minds.

  • 30 yearsbuilding with AI, since 1995
  • 500+conferences and seminars in Europe and the US
  • 29,000 hdevoted to researching AGI

More from David Vivancos.

Encyclopedia of Lost Minds: Echoes on AI

One hundred and sixty minds that shaped history, from Gilgamesh to Bodhidharma, reconstructed to answer a single question: how would each of them build artificial intelligence today? Eight hardcover tomes, twenty minds each, 4,306 pages, and every tome opens the Artificiology platform. Tome IX is in production.

Visit lostmindsai.com

  1. Tome I, The first names
  2. Tome II, The axial dawn
  3. Tome III, The classical turn
  4. Tome IV, The Athenian peak
  5. Tome V, The Hellenistic mind
  6. Tome VI, The Roman witness
  7. Tome VII, The tested world
  8. Tome VIII, The shaped mind

Start with chapter 1, or get the whole book.

Is humanity ready to give up knowledge to machines? Decide for yourself.

Buy on Amazon Read chapter 1 free