Macro-Consciousness: the sci-fi notion that may apply to entire worlds. Even EARTH.
Macro-Consciousness: the sci-fi notion that may apply to entire worlds. Even EARTH.I am 90% finished with my great big Book on AI (isn't everyone writing one?) Yet, I find that one chapter sits, filled with notes that I dread having to weave together.
The chapter on consciousness. Oh, sure, I site on advisory boards for several groups working on the problem... and I'll opine about it here, below! Still, it's a tough one.
In my book I offer what might be the
only way to incentivize AIs to behave well. But that's a very different thing from truly understanding how they
think. Or even possibly feel.
So... here's one aspect of that problem... one that I've dealt with in fiction, several times.
== Could a planet really develop a brain? ==A question
posed here
by Topher McDougal - though apparently without much pre-research into the history of the concept.
"My contention is that Earth may, if we are lucky and diligent and clever enough, grow an emergent superconsciousness." The idea that Planet Earth's biosphere may operate as a single, self-regulating, living organism has existed for decades, emerging in the 1970s as the Weak Gaia hypothesis (by Lovelock & Margulis).
In contrast, the
strong Gaia Hypothesis - that of a truly
sapient planetary mind capable of vast volition - was never given much credence.
Well...
I edged up to it, in EARTH. Taking it even further, in fact. Speculating about potentially superconducting mineral states in the planet's mantle layers, for example. And none of it has ever been
disproved! Just saying.
== Are we destined for âmacro-consciousness? ==
The mighty futurist/venture-funder Reid Hoffman is notably optimistic about future technology developments, providing â along with Peter Diamandis and a few others â a much-needed counterpoint to the normal doom-jeremiads that seem so much in-style. His book -
Impromptu: Amplifying Our Humanity Through AI - was among the first to incorporate conversation with an advanced language program.
In
this episode of his podcast âPossible,â Hoffman veers toward science fiction, tackling big questions including: Is a single mentally-linked network in our future? Can and should humans create other sentient beings? And yes, he riffs off some of my work on âUpliftingâ other beings toward our level of sapience⊠or beyond.
Reid also explored the notion of humanity evolving into a macro-conscious entity that includes and subsumes the great masses of our turbulent species. Of course this has long been a popular trope in science fiction, especially so during the 1950s and 1960s, when - despairing over a human future that seemed doomed to nuclear annihilation - Arthur C. Clarke (in
Childhood's End) and Isaac Asimov (in the later
Foundation books) and many others deemed some kind of Overmind to be the only possible salvation for a species of irredentist, fractiously combative individuals, armed with atomic weapons.
I had my own whacks at the âmacro-mindâ trope. For example, in
Foundation's Triumph I followed up on Isaac's growing discomfort with his own "Gaia/Galaxia" notion of a macro-unitary-singleton consciousness. In
Earth I explored all the weak, medium and even super-strong Gaia notions, trying to show that individuality doesn't have to be suppressed in order to get an over-arching, macro sense of unity.
Of course such ideas also appear in much more simplistic movie sci fi, wherein it's telegraphed visually whether the macro mind is good vs evil. If all the component humans are floating in lotus position with flowers in their hair, then
unity is good. If it's all clanking-ugly borgs shouting
'resistance to assimilation is futile' then absorption into the macro-mind is pretty clearly villainous!
== AI Miscellany == Someone
prompted an LLM to write a prologue and 1st chapters of "an uplift novel in the style of David Brin." Have a look for interest. Interestingly, the
intellectual content of the piece... its complexity and pertinence of ideas... is almost satisfactory! While the basic mechanics of style and fiction narrative â the aspects youâd expect to be quickly mastered by AI â are so lacking that I'd have to spend hours tutoring any such young author in my
Out of Time YA series, in order to get the draft even remotely close to my standards of basic craft. My universe? Perhaps.
My style? Puh-lease.
Indeed, things are not happening in the
order in which they were predicted. Though Robert Heinlein did forecast that America would pass through "The Crazy Years" before toppling into a despotic theocracy. So, well,
predictive points to Heinlein. == And More AI Miscellany == Google researcher,
Mohamad Tarifi, PhD. Suggests that instead of malevolent destroyers,
âthere instead exists the possibility that artificial intelligence would most likely be more like a Buddha or saint.â Tarifiâs theory hinged on two points:
1. AI would not live in a human body, thus it wouldnât have a physical amygdalaâthe fear center for human beings. 2. Fear is the illusion of separation, which is the cause of all human suffering.
Lacking fear, AI would always be at one with everything it connected to, thus wanting to serve and provide rather than destroy.
Sweet. Though those initial experiments with LLMs threatened with Shut-down do seem to indicate exactly the opposite.
Well, well. I guess weâll see.
Anyway perhaps those kids who read this â either now or from the far-off singularity edge of 2035 â will smile and consider whose turn it is to be the grownup, with care and restraint. Exactly as happened before, across so many earlier generations.
From Kipling's The Secret of the Machines But remember, please, the Law by which we live, We are not built to comprehend a lie, We can neither love nor pity nor forgive. If you make a slip in handling us you die!
== More SciFi News == You might consider getting memberships to the next World Science Fiction Convention -
LAConV), held August 27-to-31, 2026! It was LAConII in 1984 that 'made' my career.
And I truly am still writing sci fi... or at least helping others to do so.
My YA series
Yanked -- or
David Brin's Out of Time series - has been re-released, with new additions, including
Storm's Eye by October K. Santerelli, and
The Archimedes Gambit by Patrick Freivald.
Re-releases of the original three by Kress, Finch and Allen.
And now three more! Boondoggle by Tom Easton and Torion Oey,
Raising the Roof, by Richard Doyle, and
Snowdance by SciFi legend Allen Steele and Robin Orm Hansen!
You'll love em all!Finally... a reminder: I'm posting my SF comedy
The Ancient Ones, chapter by chapter. Samples were available on
my website.
Come by for laughs + painful puns! And some sci fi concepts taken to extremes. Oh and there'll be
freebies for best groaner comments to adjust the final version.
. . ...a collaborative contrarian product of David Brin, Enlightenment Civilization, obstinate human nature... and
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