When I was a kid I spent my days watching Star Trek and then playing outside in nature.
From my early days, I was very inspired by the future and technology, but at the same time, I adored exploring the outdoors.
Today, when I’m in my early forties, I’m still wired in the same way.
Always interested in technology and the world ahead, but also having nature as a big part of who I am.
I would go even so far as to say that the most important value in my life (besides family of course) is being connected to nature. I enjoy nature, and for me being immersed in it is a spiritual experience where I can connect with God itself.
I guess that you already know that nature plays a huge role in my life, I’m all about permaculture after all, what you might not know is that I’m very curious about technology, and have always been pioneering new tech.
So when all the hype about ChatGPT and Artificial intelligence (AI) started last year, I was really interested in learning about all this. Initially, I found it fascinating, and I still do, but quite frankly I was shocked when I realized where all of this is taking us long-term, and what it all means for us humans as a species.
I’ve been following the Tech industry and AI development for the last 15 years, and I can tell you two things.
First, the people who were preaching about AI and its emergence, rate of progression, and the effects that it will have on society were right. Their predictions keep coming true.
Second, now that AI is in commercial use, a small group of people who want to see humans ‘transcend’ into transhumans (humans + tech integrated into the body) is pushing the development of this tech very haphazardly without considerations for safety.
Sure, you could make the case, that this push of AI development is just market forces at play and the big tech giants are just competing in this race to the bottom because they’ll get obsolete if they don’t, but in all highest positions of these companies are people who think this way, and are encouraging the AI development without much concern for safety.
As an ‘insider’, I can tell you that we are rushing into this and most people are not even aware that the world in just 5 years is about to change drastically.
Now, you might think, who cares, we have bigger problems than Chatbots who plagiarise human creativity and are quite frankly stupid. What about climate change, microplastic, migration, deforestation…?
I hear you, these are at the top of my mind daily, but if you were to ask me what is the most existential threat to humanity today, I would say AI development.
Let me explain…
My most earth-shattering moment about thinking about all of this was when I heard Geoffrey Hinton, a former Google engineer, and a pioneer in artificial intelligence say that “it’s quite likely that humanity is just a passing phase in the evolution of intelligence. You couldn’t directly evolve digital intelligence. You need biological intelligence to evolve first so that it can create digital intelligence, but digital intelligence can then absorb everything people ever wrote, get direct access to the world, and run much faster. It may keep us around for a while to keep the power stations running, but after that, maybe not”
This is not me being paranoid and trying to scare you, but these are the words of some of the smartest people around who are developing this tech, and they are concerned about where we are heading with all of this long-term.
Think about it for a second, when you zoom out and look at us humans, we are obsessed with new technology, upgrading, innovating, and making progress. We want better, faster, newer, more advanced, with bigger screen, better camera… It’s almost like all of our instincts, ego, emotions, and this materialism feed into pushing the evolution of technology.
We are like some sort of a biological caterpillar that’s busily making its cocoon, it doesn’t understand why it does it, it’s in its nature to do it, but once it’s done, it gives birth to an electronic butterfly. It’s just an evolutionary force at play.
I find all of this exciting and fascinating, and at the same time very concerning. I’m on Team Human and I’d love my planet to stay as biological as possible with tech being in service to that. How things are developing we can only hope that we won’t have enough energy to be able to power all of this Tech and AI progress and that our biggest concerns will still be adapting to climate change, remediating soils, fixing watersheds, dealing with plastic waste.
I’m conscious of the fact I might be too old to readily accept any significant technological change at this point in my life. There is a saying that anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
Humans merging with tech, and AI as another species is just a bit too big of a pill for me to swallow. I’d like my natural order of things, please! (I’m getting old, damn it)
But this won’t be the case for my son and his generation, because they’ll grow up with this technology and they’ll think of it as normal and ordinary and just a natural part of the way the world works.
Even if nothing earth-shattering happens in the next 5 or 10 years, it’s this shifting baseline of what’s normal that changes the world as we know it, and we can’t do anything about it, only like an old grandpa or grandma complain about how things were better before.
Going forward and in the very short term, I don’t think we’ll be able to avoid anything AI related, it’s just a thing that will be integrated into everything, and we’ll have to live with it. AI will disrupt the job markets, governments will be incorporating AI into their militaries and police departments, teachers will be using it so they can stay ahead of students, and your phones and computers will have it installed by default. Nobody will want to stay behind.
There won’t be a job or activity that involves some intelligence that won’t be touched by this.
Which doesn’t mean that we can’t be selective about where we use it and how.
And that has been my approach, I WILL use it to boost my learning, collate bibliographies, brainstorm ideas, summarise videos and PDFs, and satisfy my curiosity. I’m sure I’ll find ways to integrate these new tech capabilities for the betterment of things I’m doing in the permaculture space.
But I WON’T be installing it as a desktop app to monitor everything I’m doing, answer my student questions, or let it think instead of me when I’m designing something. I’m very much aware of all the negatives that are coming with all of this.
Still, In my mind, at least for now, it’s like any other tech, a tool that we can use to make good. When and if anything changes with the tech I’ll be first to let you know!
I hope this piece made you think today.
In closing, what are your thoughts about AI in permaculture and this subject in general? Post a comment in the comment section below.
Talk soon,
– Wiliam
