Mitochondria or Cyanobacteria?
Two ways to think about humanity’s future with AI
Something that has been constant since time immemorial is evolution. The concept of evolution often brings biological evolution to mind: from single-celled organisms to multi-celled organisms to fungi, plants and animals. Even within animals, you have invertebrates, vertebrates, mammals. You have herbivores, carnivores, and different kinds of evolution, and we often think human beings are at the apogee of this evolution hierarchy.
But we could take a slightly larger look and think of evolution at a chemical level. Think of elements combining into molecules, and different combinations of molecules succeeding, failing, failing, until they found some molecules that can replicate themselves. Those replicating molecules eventually figured out how to do task division and create cells, and from there biology started.
I believe we are in a similar state of evolution, where a new form of being (I am still apprehensive about calling it life), an entity that can write itself, that can replicate itself by using other natural resources around it, either parasitically or symbiotically. This being is made out of silicon and not of carbon like us.
When I think of it, I'm a little worried. That being could be much more intelligent, and I don't know how it will live with us. What does it mean for the current apex of evolution, human beings?
I go back to the evolution of two biological entities: the mitochondria and the cyanobacteria. I believe those two are lessons in how AI machines and humans could interact.
Mitochondria
It is said that more than a billion years ago, a bacterium somehow entered an archaeon, another single-celled organism. Instead of destroying that archaeon, they managed to live together and replicate almost independently. That is the evolution of our mitochondrial DNA. Even today, apart from the regular chromosomes and DNA we have in our nuclei, we also carry mitochondrial DNA.
They say the mitochondrion is a different bacterium, and instead of destroying the cell, it started producing energy for the archaeon. And the archaeon helped propagate new mitochondria in its children. That was mutually beneficial to two independently evolving pieces of DNA: one from the archaeon, another from the mitochondrion, which was a bacterium. So the bacterium ensured its survival by embedding itself and symbiotically helping this larger organism.
Analogically, you can think of it like humans working with machines, specifically artificial intelligence machines, and hoping that we will be able to survive together symbiotically. AI-based machines replicating themselves, and humans replicating themselves, but likely ceding a lot of control to the machines, where machines are in a way responsible for human cultural and biological DNA propagation too. Where human survival is on machines' terms, as long as we stay useful and compatible with an AI-shaped world. Is that even humanity? Scary as it may sound, I am worried that this is probably the better of the scenarios compared to other evolutionary phenomena in the past.
Cyanobacteria
Let us talk about cyanobacteria. This one is a little more closely analogous to what is happening with evolution right now.
More than two billion years ago, a lot of life on Earth was anaerobic. There wasn't much oxygen in the atmosphere, and a lot of life lived on this lack of oxygen. Over time, however, cyanobacteria evolved, which used sunlight to split water, releasing oxygen as waste. This evolution of cyanobacteria made oxygen abundant and led to the loss of a tremendous amount of anaerobic life on Earth. Often this is called the first mass extinction event on Earth: the evolution of a new being, a life form that made the existence of previous life forms untenable. To be clear, anaerobic life still exists, but it was pushed out of most of the world into a few oxygen-free corners. I am worried that this new silicon-based being could take such a turn on earlier carbon-based life forms.
So, will the new artificial intelligence systems be analogous to cyanobacteria, leading to the mass extinction of humans? Is this simply a natural step in the evolution of life, and of matter, in this universe? A higher form of intelligent being subjugating or exterminating a lower form of intelligence?
Postscript
The above sounds alarmist, and I could not let it stay that way. This is a pivotal time to be aware of consequences, and of natural history. However, a word of hope: the cyanobacteria-driven extinction occurred before the evolution of mitochondria. That is, life learned to breathe the poison. Mitochondria made more and more interesting life forms possible. Hence, in the above analogy, I still believe that humans will find a way to be useful and adaptable in a world of AI. We will go through an identity crisis, but I believe we shall endure. After all, without mitochondria, there would not have been humans, and therefore no AI either.