India, May 25 -- I have had the privilege of working with some of the world's leading thinkers and futurists, especially Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis, who had asked me to lead the faculty at Singularity University back in 2011. We have always agreed on one thing: We are entering an age of exponential technological change. Advances in computing, Artificial Intelligence (AI), sensors, digital medicine, synthetic biology, and more, are converging in ways that will transform every aspect of life. These tools can help cure disease, solve water scarcity, improve education, and uplift billions.

But we have never agreed on what comes next - because we hold fundamentally different views on consciousness, the soul, and what it means to be huma...