Bart Hawkins Kreps

The Internet of Animals relies on the latest products of high-tech manufacturing, and it is vulnerable to the turbulence of human power struggles. But at its heart the project is the life’s work of dedicated scientists simply doing their best to learn from animals.

If you don’t share his faith in economic growth, and if you lack confidence that pledged emissions cuts will be made actual, some paragraphs in Slow Burn will come across as wishful thinking.

Is there an imminent danger that artificial intelligence will leap-frog human intelligence, go rogue, and either eliminate or enslave the human race? You won’t find an answer to this question in an expert consensus, because there is none.

Artificial intelligence, then, represents an existential threat to humanity not because of its newness, but because it perpetuates the corporate imperative which was already leading to ecological disaster and civilizational collapse.

There are many reasons why we might expect that agri-industrial AI will lead to more biodiversity loss, more food insecurity, more socio-economic inequality, more climate vulnerability. To the extent that AI in agriculture bears fruit, many of these fruits are likely to be bitter.

All work involves, to some degree, both body and mind. This plays a major role in the degree to which AI can or cannot effectively replace human labour. Yet even if AI can not succeed in taking away your job, it might succeed in taking away a big chunk of your paycheque.