[AFT Fall ’21] The AI-Nature Conundrum
Can AI exist with, for, or as nature?
By Alex Putzer
Human-altered Nature and Artificial Intelligence are conceptually the same
Considerable human influence is detectable in around 55 % of the world’s land surfaces (as well as at least 41% of the planet’s oceans). Based on the relative irreversibility of this influence, some scientists came up with the idea of anthromes. Inspired by the concept of biomes, which define a grouping of ecosystems with similar Nature (such as deserts, forests, or oceans), anthromes, or anthropogenic biomes, describe the terrestrial biosphere in its contemporary, human-altered form. These include urban areas and villages, but also croplands, rangelands, or forested lands. ‘Nature’ has merged with ‘culture’, consequently becoming what some call natureculture. Importantly, the ‘natural’ part of this new environment has adapted to its artificialization by creating new strategies for survival. This becomes most obvious with urban wildlife. In ‘Darwin comes to Town’, Schilthuizen describes various ways of urban wildlife adapting and evolving differently than their rural counterparts. This includes crows using car traffic to crack nuts, lizards evolving feet that better grip on concrete, and birds singing earlier and louder to compete with city noises.
With these developments in mind, the question goes beyond the difference between ‘Nature’ and ‘culture’. It is rather about the difference between naturality and artificiality. The two concepts are, by definition, opposing poles. The Cambridge Dictionary defines natural “as found in nature and not involving anything made or done by people.” “Natural” is something that exists independently of humanity. “Artificial,” on the other hand, is intrinsically connected with humanity: the same dictionary defines it as “the quality of being made by people”. Thus, artificial Intelligence, or AI, can be understood as the opposite of natural intelligence. However, would such a definition not counterintuitively include elements of both naturality and artificiality? While AI’s original creators are humans (linking it to the definition of artificial), it can become something independent of humanity (commonly defined as something natural). Consequently, AI might be the key to bridging the conceptual divide between naturality and artificiality.
If we confront the concept of anthromes with perspectives on AI, we begin to see parallels. We are, on one side, (artificially) altering (an adapted yet still independent, thus natural) Nature. On the other side, we (artificially) create technology which develops its own (independent, thus natural) nature. Eventually, both become ‘chimeras’ of artificial human influence and human-independent natural agency. We are thus facing AI-Nature as well as Nature-AI hybrids, with each increasingly approaching the other from fundamentally opposing poles.
Converging poles, consequently, would lead to (currently) conceptually ambiguous amalgamations, including organic AI or technological Nature. Rereading Baudrillard, this could create natural and digital simulacrums, i.e. copies of the real that contain a truth in their own right. Such a hyperreality (a metaverse of ecosystems?) would see human-independent Nature and nature-unrelated AI as a thing of the past. Future generations will know but not live the clear-cut distinctions we still make between naturality and artificiality. Can AI thus exist with, for, or as Nature? With this question, we need to inevitably reassess the meanings of naturality and artificiality.
Alex Putzer is a PhD Researcher in Rights of Nature an Urban Ethics at Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies. You can learn more or connect with him on LinkedIn.
