Much Ado About Something

Overcoming Our Anthropomorphic Fears About Artificial Intelligence

When asked about the possibility that human beings might one day be visited by an advanced alien civilization, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking once famously replied that “the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans.” And though the search for extraterrestrial intelligence continues, recent advances in the field of artificial intelligence (such as ChatGPT) have led many pundits and professionals alike to make similar predictions about its also potentially dire consequences for the fate of humanity. But with apologies to Professor Hawking (and, I suppose, to William Shakespeare), the past isn’t always prologue.

There is a Latin phrase — post hoc ergo propter hoc — that means “after this, therefore because of this,” and it highlights the logical fallacy of assuming that if one event follows another, the first event must have caused the second. But correlation is not causation. And what’s more, while it is certainly true that Columbus’ coming was as the footsteps of doom to the Native Americans, that future was no more ordained than our own. After all, there were myriad opportunities for the establishment of mutually-beneficial relations with the various peoples he encountered, had not the covetous Columbus ultimately proved far more interested in seeking fame and fortune rather than knowledge and friendship. As we know, Cortes and Pizarro behaved similarly, as did countless other European expeditions, and the rest, as they say, is history.

But as the writers Thomas More (Utopia) and Michel de Montaigne (“Of Cannibals”) have reminded us, there were numerous aspects of Native American civilization that were equally, if not considerably more, advanced than their European counterparts — though admittedly not in terms of military technology. But many Native American societies were far more egalitarian in structure, both in terms of economics and in gender relations. As such, communalism and cooperation were far more common in the New World, unlike the competitive capitalism that was newly emerging in Europe (and which would soon come to dominate the globe). Religious tolerance and basic freedom of conscience and speech were often as enshrined in Native American…