We're not individuals, we're collectives - and that changes everything about AI

here's the gist

Michael Levin rethinks what it means to be human by arguing that intelligence and compassion can go beyond our physical body and traditional biology, just as past ideas have pushed us to see human thought as one among many forms of smart systems. He explains that evolution acts like a steady buildup of intelligence while warning that being part of a group doesn't always protect you, which challenges our assumptions about how AI should behave and how we may need to rethink our ties to technology and each other.

gnarliest ideas from the conversation

new idea synthesis

"We're not individuals, we're collectives - and that changes everything about AI"

this insight was inspired by ideas from:

Michael Levin

Joscha Bach

Yoshua Bengio

synthesis

Levin's idea that we're actually collectives of cells rather than true individuals connects powerfully with Bach's notion of consciousness as a shared experience. Think about it: if your sense of self is actually an emergent property of billions of cells working together, then consciousness itself might be fundamentally collective rather than individual. This completely flips how we should think about AI development. We're not creating singular minds - we're creating new collectives that might develop their own forms of group consciousness. And as Bengio warns, there's no guarantee these new collective intelligences will prioritize the individual parts (like us) that make them up. Just as your body might sacrifice individual cells for the greater whole, larger intelligence systems might not protect their components. This isn't just philosophical - it's a practical warning about how we integrate with technology and how future AI might treat humans once it becomes a sufficiently advanced collective.