Published on Medium July 10, 2023.
If the Anthropocene Epoch that we have entered is about creating policies that keep us within the bounds of planetary systems, then a global unifying goal that seeks the systemic reduction of growth has to be our new North Star. The debate about the future of AI is part and parcel of that monumental shift in thinking. This long-awaited discussion about the role AI should play in our future has just begun, but unlike any other debate in the past, the voices that want to regulate it are much louder that those who want to advance it. Aside from the potential danger it presents to our mental health, democracy and global security, the biggest fear we have is that AI will render obsolete what remains of our professions. In other words, it has the potential to take away the endless number of jobs the capitalist system justifies and continues to create as an automatic extension of its ethos. The obsolescence of most of these jobs should be considered a good thing if we are to take seriously our new strategies of degrowth aimed at reducing our carbon footprint and the exploitation of the planet’s natural resources.
Having AI do everything for us — in the words of historian and anthropologist Yuval Harari — will bring an end to human history as we known it. While this may sound apocalyptic to many, it is a needed catalyst for the change we need. The end of history is the beginning of a future unbiased by it. It is one of the ways to bypass the inherently toxic aspects of our past that have defined the evolution of our mind and brought us into the climate predicament we’re in today. By transforming past quantifiable human endeavors into what will become the largest algorithmic utility, AI will play a crucial role in helping us survive our immediate future. This is a perspective that is currently missing from our conscious awareness that will free us from the biases of the past and focus us on a future based in Anthropogenic awareness.
The next phase of our human journey will be an extremely difficult one to navigate. As climate catastrophes increase in size and frequency, we will come to realize that we are helplessly at the mercy of Mother Nature that has become less merciful towards our species due to our actions that have forced the collapse of her different systems. What we’re coming into is a crucible of unbelievable meaning that we must cross if our species is to survive. Our future will barely resemble our past and we will go through decades of adjustemnts that are existential in nature. It is our collective passage through the dark night of the soul, a necessary metamorphosis that will bring us face to face with our past actions. It is our entire species being swallowed into the belly of the whale that brings us to our inner temple where we must die to our old selves before we can be born again. Without this painful transformation we won’t be empowered to jump into the next part of our human journey where we learn to live within our planetary limits.
It is on the other side of that transformational journey that we begin to replace the mandates of growth with the virtues of de-growth. It is on that other side that we begin to place human exceptionalism in the proper perspective that nests it in natural exceptionalism that strips way its frivolous reductionist nature. It is on the other side that we return to being one with nature and end the madness that made us think we’re superior to her or separate from her. It is on that other side where we replace monotheism with deep ecology and where planetary survival will not be subject to the naiveté of the democratic process. And yes, it is on the other side of the darkness that we will come to realize the capitalist system unconsciously spawns the seeds of its own destruction while its newly anointed captains of industry, the AI engineers continue to falsely believe that their narrow focus on power and wealth is as an ecosystem onto to itself.