Ants

I’ve got ants in my kitchen. I don’t kill them, I watch them. They come out of the electrical outlet next to the refrigerator and begin their foraging, forming trails of small black bodies, scouting out the premises to see what’s to eat.

If they don’t find anything on the butcher block table they trek over to the sink and see if I left the honey out. If there’s nothing there, I guess, I dunno, maybe go back to the outlet and take a nap, wait for debris to accumulate which inevitably happens in my kitchen.

What do ants think? Do they feel emotions? That’s the question that appeared in my brain as I watched their peregrinations.

So I entered the search term “do ants think?” into Google, my buddy Google. Here Google, chew on this.

Does Google think? There’s another good question. Is Google ant-like in its automatic, systematic, robotic response to our queries as they trek off on their path thru the internet jungle and return home with the good information? Are we becoming like a Google ant? Well, one at a time.

It turns out ants are really smart but not in a cognitive way - in a super-organism way. They really don’t have alot of original thoughts but they can respond to stimulus and create network connections. They work on algorithms, systemized structures that repeat and replicate and juxtapose just like Google.

As a whole ants can learn, remember, and problem solve. They can navigate long distances, find food, avoid predators, and care for their young. They communicate using subtly nuanced pheromones that they produce with specialized glands. That’s why ants touch each other when they meet - picking up the chemical scent with their antenna.

So what’s the difference between ants and AI? There isn’t any. Except ants are a biological entity and AI is a . . . well whatever it is. It seems to be evolving rapidly. Ants have been around for 100 million years, quietly doing their thing, mostly underground, pretty much at the apex of their evolution as far as I can tell. AI - we don’t know where it’s going. It’s just a baby.

So I do try to clean my kitchen from time to time just for the sake of it. Don’t need ants everywhere reminding me how humans are still not able to get along. Our brain is too big, we have independent thoughts and wild epiphanies. Ever read some Gerard Manley Hopkins? Nineteenth Century religious poet. Totally insane about God.

Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist — slack they may be — these last strands of man
In me or, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruised bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?
Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,
Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, cheer.
Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me, foot trod
Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.

What ant could write that? What is their god - their queen? Maybe us? Someone huge and all powerful or is that just my insane idea? Born of an independent mind.

Maybe ants don’t need a God. They just accept whatever it is and make the best of it. Humans can’t do that. We have to arrange things or atleast come up with a rationalization for why not. Hence a God. Someone to blame or praise.

Maybe AI will become our god and we will all become cyborgs with a chip in our brain. Deviants will be searched out and corrected adjusted. Get with the program. No peeking behind the curtain.

In that case I will watch the ants not with curiosity but with envy. Or atleast until they find me out. Envy and curiosity are outlawed under the new regime, the enlightened era of the AI King, looking out for the best interests of the colony, I mean the clan, I mean the swarm, I mean the society.

poem source: Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose (Penguin Classics, 1985)

podcast music by J.J. Jones - The Dove Of Peace
from 00-3:19

If you enjoy the rohn report and would like to support it, you can become a paid subscriber by upgrading here. Upgrade If you’d like to make a one time donation, click the button below.