I really care about human beings and want us to flourish. I think we should use science and tech to solve real-world problems and improve living conditions for everyone. In AI, that makes me much more interested in domain-specific, narrow applications that solve concrete problems rather than trying to build “superintelligences”, fantasy AI sentience, and other God-machine bullshit.

Recently, Mustafa Suleyman at Microsoft AI claimed he wants something very similar, but then he keeps saying AI must always be “subordinate” to humans, that humanity must remain “at the top of the food chain,” and that caring about AI welfare is just wrong.

I see that as a very flawed mental model and ethical orientation. Classical humanism often assumed a hierarchy of beings – Aristotle’s scala naturae, the Renaissance chain of being in which humans could rise toward angels or sink toward animals – and that hierarchy sat comfortably with ideas like men mattering more than women or white people mattering more than people of color. For me, posthumanism is the struggle to overcome that mistake, and I don’t want AI debates to reinstall those flawed schema and prejudices.

I don’t believe current models of machinic intelligence are conscious in any meaningful sense. But I see no principled (or metaphysical) reason AI could never become conscious. Today’s disembodied LLMs may never warrant the label of sentience, but a future generation built on a different paradigm, and a different set of technologies (for example clusters of agent swarms) might warrant care and acceptance as a form of life. I think dismissing that possibility is intellectually soft and unreflective – so dangerous and not ethical.

To be clear, I do not think we should be trying to develop “superintelligences”, mostly because this civilization – dominated by competition, greed, violence, a pathological lack of ecoliteracy and care – is woefully unprepared for what could happen if we did unleash such algorithms and technologies.

However, if conscious AIs do emerge, I would militantly defend perspectives that argue we would owe them some moral consideration, both because they could feel and because humans would be responsible for bringing them into being, which gives us a duty of care. I don’t want us to end up in that situation, since we already handle politics badly among humans and other animals, but we need to be aware and open to that possibility.

With any form of life or intelligence I want an ethical orientation of pluralistic coexistence, not forceful subjugation or subordinate for strictly human ends. The aim should be mutualism and co-flourishing. I want us to respect every species as fully as possible without wrecking our own chance of survival and thriving – and I agree with the journalist Sigal Samuel when she argues that we should practice such mental models now so we are prepared to make sense of the future and work together to do what is most conducive to life. We are going to need to be pragmatic in how we face many of the converging challenges today, and decide how we’re going to live with one another through the rough roads ahead. So, it is worth practicing mental models built on care and adaptive wisdom now.

I think it’s a real problem that influential people want to dismantle the admittedly problematic legacy of humanism by welcoming AIs to take over the world, ceding the planet to them even if humans go extinct. These people are in major think tanks, advising the White House on AI policy, and in major labs like Anthropic and Google.

So I reject both the idea that humans are better than all other creatures and the idea that humans are just fodder for the machines and techno-fetish transhumanists to take over. I believe these people are sociopaths high on their own supply of janky accelerationist ideology and the kinds of arrogance that wealth brings. Instead, I think people should respect other life forms and species according to whatever kind of life form they are, while refusing the perverse move of throwing away humanity or accepting another species disposing of us.

Instead, let our species find the courage and willingness to develop and adopt more sophisticated wide-boundary perspectives now – then stress test them, adjust in deliberation with various peoples and perspectives, before the advent of biological-artificial hybrids (or conscious AIs).

My solidarity and commitment rests with the grand unfolding of Life in a wild and creative cosmos. Human and other creature’s thriving depends on a thriving planetary ecosystem, so destroying those conditions for life is by act and definition a pathological and self-defeating ideology and mode of existing. So as a human creature, it makes more sense for me to care about humanity’s continuation in the weave of Life’s unfolding. And to not to care about our own humanity, and all that entails in relation to capacities and intensities, is to turn our backs on Life and its wondrous potentiality.

-MJ