An amazing 30 min talk by Deborah Gordon
Thought provoking questions about all that fascinating information on ants indeed!
I would love to get more of your personal take on it.
Humans have a remarkable ability to learn from the natural ecosystems that surround us. The swarm intelligence research often references ants, birds, fish, and bees. What can we learn from the way these animals self organize? Can it help make humans more cooperative and peaceful amongst each other. Can we navigate through the difficult nuance of our personal beliefs and differences amongst others while avoiding mob mentality or other dangerous alternatives?
One thing swarm science doesn’t talk about (that im aware of) is all the remarkable ways other animal species self organize such as packs of wolves, herds of buffalo, pods of dolphins, colonies of prairie dogs, even groups of bonobos.
Then of course there are dozens of examples of beautiful species who have evolved with a central hierarchical structure such as prides of lions and herds of elephants.
Humans appear to be gifted with an intelligence that allows us to apply learnings from the natural world and alter its course for our current and future generations. We can choose our own destiny according to our collective will.
One thing I would be weary of is focusing too much effort in the study of a select few species for scientific human cognitive behavioral course correction. To the best of my knowledge, most people reading this were raised on their mother’s teet and not in an AI egg chamber. Humans have tits and dicks, not exoskeletons and antennas.
Even this video noted how ant colonies grow in size and evolve year after year. If our goal is pure size and scale of collective intelligence from day one then that begs several philosophical questions.
Who or what are we really building for?
Are there potential consequences to large scale swarms? Is there a scenario where the bonds we share with our small families and communities (which have already eroded dramatically over the last 100 years) would further erode in a swarm-based future?
With regard to the next generation as they learn to self actualize into independent productive adult human beings:
Do we want them to grow up thinking “the swarm” must approve of their independent and personal ambitions? Or do we want them to grow up thinking “their family and their community” must approve? Are both outcomes needed to help humanity reach its next level of collective consciousness?
In the era of AI, will the swarm also be composed of AI? Would that mean they will grow learning to discourse with AI more than with family? Is it a possibility? If it happened, is that a bad thing?
As you can see - the video begs several questions? The most thought provoking of which is: Do you see a potential outcome that accelerates humanity to a path of “enslavement to AI”. If we choose to let AI do all the thinking for us, let algorithms and screens do all messaging for us, then what does that make of our future?
It was stated that ant colonies grow in size year after year for about 15 years. Then the colony must start over with a new queen. This reflects two things that I believe hold true no matter what.
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Building a genie and not golem will require starting small. Make sure the swarm’s family and community is well fed so that a swarm can grow with real human-centered structure and social bonds. Start too big and too soon with fake food, and all we’ll do is recreate the mistakes of the past - feeding a distant queen and not ourselves.
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Ant colonies don’t live very long.
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- I agree with starting smallish. But I also want to be able to turn audiences into voices. For example on podcasts. There is a podcast called VERGECAST - whch is a technology, tech culture, and innovation podcast. This week - It’s later into the episode 80-90 min in on my player - they have this “Go90” scale of streaming services. They rate services from 0-90 on if they’re doomed or not. As they end the segment they were looking for a way to have their whole audience summit their scores and come to a consensus.
Sounds like collective decision making. And it would be awesome o give large groups of people a voice. Execute in small cricles but still have the ability to talk to large diverse groups.
- Ant Colonies live as long as the queen. When the queen dies the ant colony needs to move on because there is no means of reproduction Queens live 10-20 years, but the rest are usually less than a year.
Still good stuff to consider.