AI is generating serious concerns by leading experts that it may be driving humanity and life on Earth toward destruction or extinction. However, it is worth considering its ability to empower humanity’s capacity for creation as we weigh the risks and rewards of AI research. Instead of asking only “whether will humanity be exterminated by AI,” it is fruitful to also ask, “what is alive and enlivened after AI and AGI as it causes humanity to become more alive and more vital as it introduces us to entirely new ways of conceiving life, of conceiving of life, of perceiving life, and amplifying humanity’s ability to problem-solve and thus improve the prospects for human progress on the biosphere we live in. AI is even challenging the traditional Cartesian idea that some phenomena are worthy of scientific study and others are not by showing us that the newest scientific data gathering instruments combined with AI are capable of revealing and even creating realities that were not accessible before. Here, we show that AI is sparking a multifront revolution in humanity’s relationship with reality itself by providing us with the means to convert imagination into reality and to shape it. AI is bringing about once-in-a-species revolution by enabling humanity to create new realities atom by atom, electron by electron, gene by gene, and cell by cell, species by species, and by propelling humanity deep into outer-space, sub-atomic space, virtual-space, and algorithmic space. Far from killing off life, AI is empowering it. The most important findings are that working assumptions matter. If we believe that AI is deadly, this will inherently preclude us from working with it as a vivifying life force. This becomes even more important as AI moves past words on a screen and begins to operate in the physical realm. The implications of this line of enquiry are important because all science requires assessment of the risks against the potential rewards of discovery. Also, AI is thus more than technology. It is an example of techplexity, meaning that there is a need to understand not just any individual technology but the iterative AI-enhanced or AI-led interactions and interdependences between many kinds of technologies and scientific processes and even philosophy. AI is like a glue that connects all discovery and innovation, allowing humanity to perceive, create, and innovate in new ways.