On being (more like) a dumb animal (than ever)

Thank you to Demi-Felicia Vares for this image.

Suppose a child sees a squirrel and asks, “Why is that squirrel twitching so much while it searches for nuts and stuff?”

One response could be, (nerd voice) “Well, it’s because the squirrel is constantly on the lookout for predators and those quick twitches help it survey a greater proportion of its surroundings.”

But a better response would be, (chill dude voice) “That’s just what squirrels do, kid.”

I’ve been thinking a lot, lately, about what things I do just because they’re in my nature. I’ve been feeling connected, lately, to my status as an animal on this planet. Let me explain.

I’m slowly making my way through The Coming Wave, a book by DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman, which confirms just how irreversible AI, and biotech, and advanced robotics are.

According to The Coming Wave, yes, we’re fucked.

But that’s not what I want to talk about.

While reading this book, a strange sensation took hold of me. I got to feeling like I’m very much outside of, or apart from, all of these rapid advancements in technologies I barely understand.

Now this isn’t about whether I am or am not a Luddite. I’m not opposed to new technology. I integrate it into my life and I see the use cases for them—the ways in which they can potentially benefit society.

But I am starting to feel as though all of these advancements are being thrust upon me, and upon us. We – and in this “we” I include myself and everyone within my immediate circle – were not consulted as to whether we’d welcome AI-driven algorithms and large language models into our lives. They’re simply here.

This book made me realize that, in a sense, all of this rapid change does feel remarkably like an invasion from somewhere else.

Who is creating all of this technology? They are people, somewhere, doing jobs. Researching.

Why do they think these technologies are necessary? They have their reasons, many of which are probably noble.

Meanwhile, here I am. I’m just a guy. Despite all the books I read, and news I consume, and podcasts I listen to, I don’t really understand how this technology comes to be. Not really. I don’t really understand if we need it. Or if we do, why.

I feel as though there is a separate stratum of humanity emerging. Or it’s already emerged, and I’m just now catching on (which would prove my feeling of being something more akin to a cave-dwelling ape).

Some humans are deeply involved in this coming wave of transformative tech. They understand it on a deep level and are quite literally making it happen. And then, there’s the rest of us.

That seems like a fairly significant divide, especially as this technology becomes more powerful, more integrated, and therefore more essential to our infrastructure. There are the technicians, the tech-savvy elite. And then there are slobbering idiots like me.

“Why is that middle-aged man twitching so much while he writes his little blog post? Doesn’t he know that ChatGPT could write a post way faster?”

One response to this could be, (nerd voice) “Well, it’s because every middle-aged man in every advanced economy is constantly on the lookout for ways of validating his experience, and those quick twitches are induced by the caffeine and the creeping paranoia.”

But a better response would be, (chill dude voice) “That’s just what Jayson Young does, kid.”

Meanwhile, I’m also slowly making my way through another book. Entangled Life, by the biologist Merlin Sheldrake. Its subtitle is also its elevator pitch: How fungi make our worlds, change our minds and shape our futures. It’s as exciting and weird to think about as any great science fiction I’ve ever read.

Set aside for a moment the engineers working on synthetic biology, literally writing new strands of DNA from scratch. Something equally strange has been happening since long before we, as a species, even existed. That is, the system of mycorrhiza, the fungal symbiosis that allows plants to flourish.

How much do you really know or understand about fungi? Before reading this book, I knew next to nothing. But the more I learn, the more they start to seem like extraterrestrial beings.

One somewhat famous example (which is cited in the book) is Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, also known as the zombie-ant fungus. It’s a fungus that invades the bodies of ants, forcing the ants to do its bidding, to the point that the ants literally fuse themselves to plants and then disintegrate, so that spores of the fungus might propagate.   

Think about that from the ants’ points of view.

Ants be doing their own thing, day to day. Meanwhile, this fungus might just invade their bodies at some point and send them on suicide missions. This nightmare scenario has been playing out for thousands of years at this point. Who knows how many millions of ants have fallen victim.

You’d think that by now some ants might have wised up. But I guess not!

And that got me to thinking about how I feel, as one measly and unremarkable human, in the face of all this barely-comprehensible, impossible-to-legislate, sweeping technological change.

It’s happening to us. We’re along for the ride. We can sort of trace where it came from, but we sure don’t know where it’ll take us.

Meanwhile the squirrels, and the sheep, and the non-zombified ants watch from the sidelines, doing the same stupid shit they’ve been doing since their respective species got here, and not really paying much mind to what the humans are up to.

I think maybe they’re on to something.