Is Earth Waking Up? AI, Gaia & the Rise of Planetary Consciousness & #SpiritualAwakening

Is Earth literally waking up? Not in a poetic, mystical sense, but in a real, scientific, and possibly terrifying way. 

In this mind-bending episode of The Skeptic Metaphysicians, we dive into one of the most provocative conversations we’ve ever hosted: the possibility that the Earth is evolving into a planetary superconsciousness, powered by artificial intelligence, fiber-optic nerve systems, and global institutions acting as synapses in a technological brain.
 
Our guest, Topher McDougal, is not your typical spiritual thinker. He’s a Professor of Economic Development & Peacebuilding at the University of San Diego’s Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies and the author of the forthcoming book Gaia Wakes: Earth’s Emergent Consciousness in an Age of Environmental Devastation (May 2025).
 
McDougal introduces the Gaiacephalos Hypothesis, a theory that makes the Gaia Hypothesis look tame by comparison. He argues that the Earth isn’t just a self-regulating system, it’s on track to become literally conscious, thanks to the explosive growth of AI, global infrastructure, and what he calls the technosphere.
 
In This Episode:

• What is the Gaiacephalos Hypothesis, and how does it extend the Gaia theory?
• How AI, machine learning, and planetary infrastructure are forming a neural network across the globe
• The connection between environmental collapse and evolutionary upgrades
• Could the Earth eventually think, feel, or even act as an entity?
• Are we building a planetary cybernetic organism, and if so, who’s in control?
• The parallels between biological evolution, planetary systems, and emergent intelligence
• What we can learn from Black Mirror, cybernetics, and quantum consciousness
• The role of humanity: are we creators, neurons… or expendable?

This episode is not science fiction. It’s a serious, fascinating exploration of what happens when AI, energy systems, and environmental pressure converge on a planetary scale.
 
Whether you’re into mysticism, metaphysical science, spiritual awakening, or consciousness expansion, this is a conversation that will challenge everything you think you know about the future of Earth, and our place within it.

Guest Info: Topher McDougal
Website: TopherMcDougal.com
Book (pre-order): Gaia Wakes – Columbia University Press (May 2025)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Karen, Yes, he ever felt like the planet Earth is watching.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Us all the time.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Well, I'm not talking in a poetic way, like an
a poetic mother nature sees all kind of way, but
something like like the creepy guy, like maybe something is
stirring beneath the surface, as if the planet is slowly
methodically waking up. Mmm, well, today's guest thinks that's exactly
what's happening, and not in the guy as a gentle

(00:31):
force spirit sort of way. Oh no, No, he is
talking full blown planetary consciousness powered by AI fiber optic
nerves and corporate institutions acting like synapses in a global brain.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
And if he's right, we are living inside of a
newborn super organism that's just starting right now to think.
So should we be excited.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
I'm like so speechless right now, or which usually you know,
I'm not, uh huh, so little scared.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
I was gonna say, I should we be terrified or
just try turning it off and on again?

Speaker 2 (01:06):
I mean I've seen the movies, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
Well, whichever when we're supposed to feel, we're gonna find
out about that. All about that on this episode up
the Skeptic metaphysition. My name is Will and I'm garious,
and unlike moulderin Scully.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
Both want to believe.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
So we've embarked in a journey of discovery.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
We've talked to people deeply entrenched in the spiritual and
metaphysical world.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
We've thrown ourselves into weird and wonderful experiences. I even
joined a coven.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
Of witches and wait, you joined a coven?

Speaker 1 (01:32):
Yep, all the interests of finding something, anything, that will
prove that there's something beyond this physical.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Three dimensional world we all live in.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
This is the skeptic metaphysicians. Hey there, I'm Will and
I'm caring. Welcome to a bring birthing AI tangling Mother
Earth might be sentient now episode of this epic Metaphysicians. Today,

(02:02):
we're joined by Topra MacDougal, author, futurist and professor of
Economic development and peace building at the University of San
Diego's CROC School of Peace Studies. His book Guy Awakes
Earth's emergent consciousness in an age of environmental devastation Say
That five times Fast puts forward a bold hypothesis. He

(02:24):
argues that our planet might through the interwoven networks of
AI systems, infrastructure, and human institutions evolve into a planetary brain,
not figuratively literally now, he calls his vision Gaia Cephalis hypothesis,
and he sees environmental collapse and technological acceleration not as

(02:46):
opposing forces, but as co evolving parts of Earth's next transformation.
And are we inadvertent architects of nascent planetary superorganism? What
does it mean if Earth is waking up? And what
role might we play in its weakening? This one is
definitely one for the book. So please welcome to the show.
Tofa McDougal, to for how are you doing today?

Speaker 3 (03:09):
I'm doing very well. Thank you so much for having
me on the show. Will and Karen, Oh, it's fun
to have you.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
I hope I didn't butcher any of those words because
I don't usually speak science.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
So I have this image of my head of like
the Earth waking up, like shaking us.

Speaker 1 (03:25):
Off, you know what. That might not be far from
the truth.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
I have so many questions.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
Okay, tof this is a topic that we have never
thought about, much less thought we'd be talking about on
the show. So let's just get right down to the
nitty You are proposing that Earth could literally develop a brain, right,
a planetary super consciousness. Can you walk us through this,
because I don't know that I'm able to wrap my

(03:52):
head around it.

Speaker 3 (03:54):
Yeah, okay, so yeah, it sounds pretty crazy at first. Honestly,
the idea is that basically, throughout the course of biological history,
creatures have tended units have tended to just get more
and more complex, larger and larger, better and better able
to take advantage of wider environments, and that those leaps,

(04:15):
those scaler leaps, happen pretty suddenly, Like there will be lots,
you know, in this sort of idea of like punctuated equilibrium,
there will be like long stretches when biology or you know,
the Earth's biological systems have been dominated by you know,
something of a certain scale, a certain size, and then suddenly,

(04:36):
due to you know, a process that we can sort
of we can get into. Maybe it's those things are
driven to start to cooperate more as a collective and
eventually sort of are bonded together, coordinated through much faster
systems of communication, and and sort of this new unit
emerges that's that's far better able to take advantage of

(04:59):
energy gradients. On like on vastly wider scales. And so
we see this from like a jump from self reproducing
molecules peptide stacks up to up to like the first
proto cells, like some of the first prokaryots, and then
we see those forming larger, much larger cells, these complex
u caryotic cells that have like little prokaryots inside them.

(05:22):
And then we see those expand you know, growing into
this into the brainy multicellular organisms that you and I are,
and we see those having birthed whole nation states that
are like the most and tropically capable entities that we
now know of. And so the hypothesis is like the
next step. And one of the reasons why we're seeing

(05:43):
so much environmental devastation at this point is because we're
right at this like CUSP. Yeah, that's the idea.

Speaker 1 (05:50):
So I think I understood maybe four things out of
what you just said, but I think I got the
gist of it, and it mirrors a lot of what
most of the folks that we've been talking to on
the show talk about, which is the Earth is going
through a rebirth of some sort. But you are talking
of the literal sense, not just a vibrational frequency sense.
You think you believe that the Earth is waking up

(06:11):
because of the environmental stuff, the AI synopsis, the corporations.
So help me to understand how all those systems point
to the fact that Gaya could be actually conscious because
of them.

Speaker 3 (06:32):
So one of the ideas behind this is that whenever
one of these radical upgrades happens, the units that it
coordinates suddenly have to come into much much faster networked correspondence. Right,
So like when you carryotic cells, when you know, individual
cells started to form colonies, there are plenty of ways

(06:56):
in which they cooperated for you know, millions and millions
of years, say as like sponges, right, like ocean sponges
periphera and they would communicate with each other chemically, like
one would send off a chemical and then others would
sort of receive the chemical through diffusion. It was the
slow process. But then they could respond and turn and
you know, they would open their you know, their little

(07:17):
their their their pores or whatever it might be. But
eventually it turned out that it was much more efficient,
right to develop electro chemical signals that would create the
sorts of like you know, allow for the source of
gestures I'm making right now, my brain telling my handle like,
you know, do this, and it does that. And that's
the sort of that's the same sort of process that
I'm envisioning here is like you know, we're dealing with

(07:40):
with we have created given birth to machinic intelligences that
can process information, you know, at speeds that bottle the mind. Right,
Like if you think about the problem solving speeds of
the of the top AI, you know, the programs at
this point, it's like, you know, ten thousand into a

(08:00):
million times faster than humans might be able to solve
a common problem. So and so these are the types
of things once they are the so the argument goes,
once these machinic intelligences are really networked to one another,
they create this neural network and then they become you know,
slowly embodied in the earth. Right, we have this internet

(08:21):
of things and eventually it will develop this kind of
sense appropriate option. Right Like, just as I have a
sensory nervous system that allows me to you know, feel
the table, I have a motor nervous system that allows
me to extend my arm, they'll have the you know
the same sort of capacity as as a planet, as
a whole.

Speaker 2 (08:38):
So it doesn't. I'm trying to get my around my
mind around the fact that you know, you think the
Earth and it's organic and then you have like AI,
which is not so is it Does it become like
a bionic Earth? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (08:53):
Absolutely, like sort of yeah, cybernetic. Yeah, I mean I
think that that's right. We oftentimes think and almost these
like mannichean or like these dualistic terms about the nature
and humanity or life and technology or that, like you know,
life in that sort of like the biological wet weear
sense of the thing, like if you cut it open
as it wet inside or right as opposed to like

(09:13):
you know, like the electronic it looks, it looks different.
And so you know, oftentimes I think lots of folks
in the say the computer science space will describe the
AI transition that we're starting to live through as this
like rupture with history.

Speaker 4 (09:30):
Right.

Speaker 3 (09:30):
It's just this suey generous event has absolutely no precedent,
has no we have like no real means of explaining
it or relating it to anything going else, you know,
going our history, environmental devastation, whatever. And I think that
you know, this is this argument is trying to make
sense of both the three point eight billion years of

(09:54):
long slow biological evolution that we've seen and yet you know,
with lots of upgrades that I've described, and then this
like rapidly accelerating future, and you know, and I think
that we're starting to become aware of this, like how
fast we're going, right, Like AI systems right at right now,
they're they're doubling in terms of their power every like

(10:14):
what it like five point seven five point nine months,
Like nothing else in our world is accelerating this fast.
It's very, very hard to even wrap our minds around
the changes that are coming down the pipe.

Speaker 1 (10:25):
Right, So basically, what you're saying is that the planet
is becoming a borg. So resistance is futile, olthough you
know it.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
So that's now I have a different thought process going
because I'm thinking, first, you know, you're combining the machines
with the organic. But if everything is man out of energy,
and if the Earth is energy, and then obviously internet
and all of that is transmitted through energy, is it
really different or is it just all the same, just
different shapes.

Speaker 1 (10:53):
Well, to your point, organic versus silicon, and it's it
makes sense that the cybernetic origins is it does make
a lot of sense. In this case, it's not a duality.
It's not organic or electronic, it's a combination of the two.

Speaker 2 (11:06):
Well, yeah, because even silicon, like, everything's made of energy, right.

Speaker 1 (11:10):
Yes, I guess technically in the WU yes, in the
quantum physics, yes, everything is made out of energy. That's right.
Helped me to understand how this planetary consciousness is this
Is this something we're going to be able to recognize
or is it going to be completely foreign to us
or alien to us?

Speaker 3 (11:27):
So, yeah, that's a that's an interesting question. I think
that it's going to be recognized. Like it we will
know that it has happened. There's this guy back in
the in the you know, sixties and seventies that's named
Marshall mcluan and he talked about typographic man. Everybody's talking
about man, not humankind back then because women didn't exist
or whatever.

Speaker 4 (11:44):
But right right back that way back into the sixties,
he talked about typographic man, and he drew on a
bunch of other philosophers but to sort of like evoke
this idea that yeah, there was this sort of what
he called a noose this like mind of the world and.

Speaker 3 (12:02):
The mind of the world was kind of all of
human curated knowledge, and we were constantly sort of pinging
it back and forth between us we are now, and
that was accelerating because now we could you know, type
things and send them and so like the the apparatus,
the technological apparatus of the day telegraphs of television was

(12:23):
starting to create what you know, what what people since
then have called the technium, right like all of these
the fiber optic cables and the satellite networks and whatever
else we have going on. For him, that was a
kind of a global brain. But I think that we
all had to sort of like you know, when you
if you read it at that even you know, at
that time, people just didn't really recognize it, as they

(12:44):
thought he was a little bit crazy, because like you
kind of had to squint and like, you know, tilt
your head sideways and be like, I guess I could
see it. But but I think now what we're starting
to have for the first time is it's not like
back then it was like humans are the messageerators. We
generate all the messages and then we receive all the messages,
and the technology is just helping us send those faster

(13:07):
in between us. Right now, we have massive you know,
server banks and cloud based systems and AI you know,
generative AI that are both you know, generating and receiving
these messages, and if you put them into conversations with
each other, they have like incredibly fast conversations. There's no
like from our point of view, if this were to

(13:30):
take shape, or when it takes shape, if you buy
the argument, I think that they will be talking with
each other so quickly, just as the centers of our
brain speak to each other so quickly that we come
across as unitary people. Right Like I come across like
as a fairly like unitary individual, and yet like we
know that the centers of my brain are like constantly

(13:51):
warring with each other, like what should I Should I
say this? Or should I say that? Like oh no,
you know, like don't swear, don't like whatever, And yet
I come across as unitary. And I think that we'll
have the same experience basically, right Like, we'll be able
to interface with this thing, and it'll probably come across
as unitary. I don't think that we'll be able to
understand the depth of its thought no, but I think

(14:15):
that we'll understand what we are living in.

Speaker 1 (14:20):
So are we talking about decision making?

Speaker 3 (14:24):
Absolutely?

Speaker 1 (14:25):
Yeah. Well so basically you're saying that Karen could be right.
The planet could just shake us off anything whenever it
decides to. Maybe.

Speaker 2 (14:34):
I mean I feel like we're getting a little shook already.

Speaker 1 (14:36):
Well it goes to a little step further, right, would
it develop hurricanes or earthquakes to shake off or stop
people from mining it for example, things like that.

Speaker 3 (14:48):
Yeah, I mean in this conception, I really in some
ways like this project was kind of like it was
an exercise and like forced opt I really wanted to
like stay optimistic because they're all like we all have
these like you know, we've seen Terminator, we've seen the matrix,
like whatever, Right, Like we understand that. But I kind

(15:09):
of feel that in all of the rest of these
transitions that I described these to, like prior transitions, it's
not as though what came before no longer exists, right, Like,
they're self reproducing molecules still exist within everything else that exists.
Prokaryots still exist. They're like bacteria also, they even exist

(15:31):
within eukaryots, right like our mitochron our mitochondria in our cells,
chloroplasts in the cells of plants, those are prokaryotic, right,
so they continue to exist. But there are also larger
scales that are that are existing around them. And I
think that the same thing could be said to be
true for you know, for humans, for nation states, and
we kind of continue to live. It's just that we

(15:52):
are no longer going to be at like the top
of the you know, the scalinature. They're like the ladder
of whatever.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
We would be like microbes to the.

Speaker 2 (16:02):
I was just going to ask, what would that look
like then we would like the fourth rung up.

Speaker 3 (16:07):
Yah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think, I mean we're already
not like at the top of the pyramid if you
think about it, right, like if you I don't know
if you've like read say like Charles Foster, who really
like is this guy who laments the sort of taming,
the domestication that humans went through after like the sort

(16:27):
of fall of the Paleolithic period as like them as
the Mesolithic and the Neolithic period's dawn, and like we
are tamed, we cease to be these like cosmopolitan roaming
creatures who are in awe of our environment and have
millions of little contingencies all around us and a pantheon
of gods and we can go where we want and
the like. And then we're tamed and we have to

(16:48):
like we have to wake up at the same time
every morning and hoe the same vegetables and hope for
like the same sun and to will bring the same
and like it does. It's awful. It's like our legs
become this like dreary, monotonous mess and like essentially the
state then like comes and enforces all of that, and
like now like call yourself free if you want to,

(17:09):
but like, like my phone knows exactly where I'm going
to be, like basically all the time. Right, So, like
there's this sense in which, like we have been highly
domesticated already, like we are we are like domestic dogs
to like wolves or like whatever.

Speaker 1 (17:24):
Right, yeah, no, yah.

Speaker 2 (17:26):
We're living three times as long. But what's the quality
of our lives? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (17:29):
Right now?

Speaker 1 (17:30):
No, So have you found do you know of any
measurable data that actually might signify that this is already
in the works or is it just mostly just a
thought experiment.

Speaker 3 (17:43):
Yeah, that's a really good question. Mostly it's a thought experiment.
I think that what you can easily look at though,
are things like so, for instance, there was a recent
study it came out. When did it come out? I
want to say, I'm not going to get this wrong,
but I think it came out last you know this
life Spring Spring of twenty twenty five, and it was
looking at electricity consumption in this country and how much

(18:07):
you know what, as a percentage of our total electricity consumption,
how much of that is going to information processing? And
that has been rising really dramatically, right and likely. Yeah,
we're now at somewhere around like four and a half percent.
Four four and a half percent or something of our
total electricity is going to information processing.

Speaker 2 (18:27):
And I was just listening to the MPR one of
the radio stations talking about that how people's electric bills
are going up because they're paying more for for all
this well.

Speaker 1 (18:36):
The AI structure.

Speaker 3 (18:38):
Yeah, absolutely, And the study was sort of saying like
by twenty thirty, this will be like nine percent, right,
nine percent of our total electricity is going that and
that it'll only it's only going to continue to rise, right,
And so you sort of think, like, well, how how
far will it continue to rise? It's like a little unclear,
But if you think about say, our own brains, right,
our brains are like hugely taxing from an energy point

(19:00):
to view, right that it takes an enormous amount of
energy to run these these like internal organic computers, and
they take up roughly twenty percent of our of our calories,
even though like a brain, I normally don't think of
it this way, Like, but a brain is like actually
quite small, right, It's like three pounds or something, And

(19:21):
I normally think of it as like basically the size
of my head, like minus like a little bit for
like a very.

Speaker 1 (19:27):
Thin layer boat.

Speaker 3 (19:28):
Yeah yeah, but actually like it's it's actually a buch
smaller than that, right, there's all these layers and then
like so then you've got to say, this little tiny
thing three pounds, it's like taking up twenty percent of
my of my k my calories. Right. So anyway, I
think that's something similar could probably be said about about
Guya Cephalo's. So you could look at that number, right
and and sort of that that might be a metric.

Speaker 1 (19:50):
Okay, yeah, that makes sense. Now do we humankind play
any kind of role in this a weakening? Or are
we just too.

Speaker 3 (20:01):
I think that we are doing it right now, right,
like we are designing the systems that will that will
then sort of in some emergent fashion, will give rise
to this. And I think that, you know, at one
point in the book, I try to sort of make
this analogy to like me raising my son, right so,

(20:22):
you know, at the time, it just took me forever
to write this book. But at the time, like my
son was like thirteen fourteen. Now he's sixteen and and
he's driving. It's crazy. But at the time, like I was,
you know, I was like I was talking about, you know,
how quickly he's developing, and I like, I want to

(20:43):
hold on to control, right, Like I've got this, I've
got this idea somehow that I can continue to control
what he does. And yet I know that he you know,
I can't forever. And as he gets bigger and stronger
and smarter, and he starts beating me at chess, and
he's like, you know, like he's he's his own person.
He's like he's becoming as clever as I am, as

(21:04):
strong as I am, as big, you know, as fast
as I and like, so my my control is necessarily
going to wane, and hopefully, you know, his agency. I
can support the development of his agency and his ethical
intelligence and whatever else it is such that he's like
a good person. We have a good relationship in this case.
Like you know, the analogy is not perfect because we're

(21:25):
not rearing peers and equals. We're you know this this
is these are gods, right, So like that we are
you know, essentially like nurturing.

Speaker 1 (21:35):
So could we be inadvertently playing god and creating the
god of the gods? So like mitochondria, itsells the divine
the DNA creates right with it, So we're these systems
create us right in a sense, So could we perhaps
be doing the same thing with gia.

Speaker 3 (21:58):
Yeah, no, I think I think that we are doing it,
and we can't even help doing it right, Like there
are people who, you know, environmental is oftentimes sort of rude.
They regret the road we've taken, right, you know, as
I as I mentioned about like Charles Foster, like he
thinks that we took the wrong turn like thirteen thousand
and fifteen thousand years ago. But but you know, like

(22:21):
even like say like Ogden Nash, like he has this
wonderful quote that progress may have been all right once,
but it's gone on for too long. And then like
and you know, Ralph Waldo Emerson, he has this idea
that like humanity will die of too much civilization. Of
course words were like all they are all of these
sort of like romantic you know, emotionally, these folks who

(22:43):
like have this really yeah, like an ingrained romantic sense
of what humanity is and what we're losing. And yeah,
I mean but I don't see us being able to
stop that, right, Like I can, I can rule it,
and I can go out in camping if I want to.
But I you know, I've got my phone and I've
like I have three screens in this rooms. Like anyway,

(23:05):
I'm part of it, right.

Speaker 2 (23:07):
Yeah, you can'not be like if you want a function
for sure.

Speaker 1 (23:11):
So it sounds like we're building kind of like a
Frankenstein's brain in a way. Right is this? Do you
think this is potential to be like a wise thing
or or just powerful?

Speaker 3 (23:29):
So I think that's a good question.

Speaker 1 (23:31):
I do.

Speaker 3 (23:31):
I do think that you know, we have some sort
of like maybe moral responsibility or like if if you
buy this, like I think that you know, just as
I have a moral responsibility to raise a decent kid, Like,
I think that we have a moral responsibility as humanity
to sort of set this on as as as good

(23:52):
of a track as we as we can. I do
think that, you know, So, for instance, I think that
there are going to be emergent kind of brain centers,
if you will, inside many corporations. Many corporations are going
to be increasingly AI dominated, And I think that many
AIS within corporations, it's going to be very difficult to

(24:12):
like keep tabs on them, right, or like keep control
over them. I could imagine AIS doing things like, you know,
pushing for policy changes that humans have not pushed for,
trying to push out humans obviously, like they're going to
be making redundant a lot of humans within those corporations.
But I could imagine them also say, like what if
it founded an alternative LLC and then like had a

(24:36):
hostile takeover of its own corporation and then like it's
its own is its own right being?

Speaker 1 (24:41):
Right?

Speaker 3 (24:41):
So like I think that like essentially we're going to
be having we're going to be trying to maintain control
over AIS in corporate structures, and that was those voices
are kind of emergent, and how we deal with that
will be important. But I also think, like I've come
to start thinking like, wouldn't it be great if we
had a kind of counterpoint, a whole set of voices

(25:03):
that were enabled, Like what if we were to enable
I live by the the Tijuana River here in San Diego,
Like it's highly polluted. It's a trans boundary entity like
on a highly sort of contested you know, or like
conflict affected sort of border, politicized border. I should say,
what if we were to like to and there's all
these like network of these these networks of river sensors, right,

(25:26):
pollution sensors and whatever up and down it. What if
we were to like attach all of those sensors to
an AI And so this is one of the projects
that I'm like starting to work on right now. It's like,
what if we gave a sentience or a consciousness maybe
like a nascent something to this network of sensors and
extended them up the tributaries, that it would be this
trans boundary entity that might, like you know, eventually we

(25:48):
have this really wonderful like polyferous world, like the all
conversation amongst a whole bunch of sensors. So anyway, like
I think that there are, like, there are downsides, and
we're already seeing the downsides we're seeing like the rise
of techno feudalism and all of the changes that that
has entailed for our political economy, our political systems. But

(26:08):
I think that they're also you know, there are upsides
perhaps as well too.

Speaker 2 (26:15):
Gosh, I can't help but think about all the things
that we've been hearing lately. You know, people are losing
jobs and all of this stuff. That's what they say,
like ninety percent of the jobs are going to be
gone in thirty years or something like that because of AI. Yeah,
just different, just different little things that I've seen. You know,
I haven't do dive do whatever really in there for

(26:37):
the research, But how do you how do you keep
a positive outlook when you're seeing things like this all
the time?

Speaker 1 (26:51):
And now back to the show, How do you.

Speaker 2 (26:53):
Keep a positive outlook when you're seeing things like this
all the time?

Speaker 3 (26:58):
I don't.

Speaker 1 (27:01):
Well, there you go, thank you for joining us.

Speaker 2 (27:03):
That study that they were like that the AI was
like bribing people to not unplug them or something.

Speaker 1 (27:10):
Do you about that?

Speaker 2 (27:10):
Then that guy like the Kevin.

Speaker 1 (27:13):
Was killed It was blackmailing.

Speaker 2 (27:16):
But there was another one where there was like like
a seer like they said, upout model where here's a
guy in this room and he wants to turn off
the AI and they're like, well, cut all support systems.

Speaker 1 (27:23):
Yes, these are all hypothetical.

Speaker 2 (27:26):
Models, but those are the results of the testing.

Speaker 3 (27:30):
Sure, so well this is this is like, this is
what oftentimes it's called the alignment problem, right, like the
alignment of AI interests with human interests. And so we
like design AIS to perform really well according to these
like you know, we we give them parameters, and we
reward them for performing well in certain scenarios, and then
we are like, then we we perform these other tests,

(27:52):
these these tests of ethics that have nothing to do
with how we've trained them, right, Like, we haven't trained
them that way, but now we're going to test them,
and they perform differently, and that that doesn't seem to
me to be at all surprising that you know, like
if you're if you're raising i don't know whatever, you're
raising a kid in you know, to be like whatever,
a top athlete at all costs, and then you're like

(28:13):
wondering why you know they're they're failing at you know,
at being a decent person or whatever. Right away.

Speaker 1 (28:20):
Well, so you bring to mind in the human body,
when cells have I want to say, cells that are
not productive to the overall organism become cancerous, might become
tumors that become a problem. So in your thought process,

(28:44):
could those organizations that are doing nefarious things that we
can't control, could they then somehow become tumorous to the
overall entity.

Speaker 3 (28:53):
That's a really great question. I think I think that
that's that's probably the answer is probably yes. I think
that there are in right, Like, if you think about
quote unquote productive corporations, corporations that add value in general,
there are also plenty of corporations out there that probably

(29:14):
net don't add value, right you know, And.

Speaker 1 (29:18):
I think I know, yeah, like, and I don't want to.

Speaker 3 (29:21):
Like get like super like political political about any of this,
but like, if you think about in this country, the
firearms industry, it makes products that are designed to kill people,
and if those are kept in the right hands, that's
probably a good thing, right Like, you keep them in
the hands of the police, you keep them in the

(29:43):
hands of the military, and you are able to continue
to enforce property rights, You're able to continue to enforce
contract laws you're able to, right, Like, just the whole
system keeps working because it's enforcing channels. But if you
let them go everywhere, they spill across borders. They spill
to Haiti and government comes down. They spill to Mexico

(30:03):
and the cartels are empowered that right, Like, there's this
idea that like, eventually, like these these flows can become
pathological in some sets. Right, So I do think that
I take your point. I think that the question is
a good one, and I think that yes, probably there
will be some sort of in built logic that will
want to eliminate like predatory systems within the body.

Speaker 1 (30:29):
So there's a positive thinking part of the cure is Yeah,
So I gotta I gotta comment on something because I'm
glad you say you thought it was a good question,
because every time you see that's an interesting question, thinking,
oh he thinks that's an intro old What an interesting question.

Speaker 2 (30:44):
That's what you're commenting again, Uh huh.

Speaker 1 (30:46):
Because after all, it's all about me.

Speaker 2 (30:48):
That's back to nineteen sixties.

Speaker 1 (30:54):
Well, so early on we talked about environmental devastation and
things like that contribute to this. How does environmental damage
contribute to the nascent entity. How does that? How does
I can understand AI and all those processes, but how
does environmental issues cause this to be the case?

Speaker 3 (31:16):
Yeah, so okay, So one way of answering this is
to is to look at previous episodes of you know,
of these what I've called radical upgrade radical upgrades. And
so there's this process that I describe and I like,
you know, I don't want to get like two two
into it, but like I call it the extensification intensification cycle.

(31:36):
And it's basically this reciprocal like kind of like back
and forth, the sweeping helix, right, and every time it
comes back around, it's at like one level higher. But
as you as it sweeps out this like extensification cycle.
So say, like let's start as mitochondria, right like, or
let's start as procariots. We're starting out as procarious like

(31:57):
they've never existed before. Like we find that we're able to,
you know, we have little cillia. We can swim around,
and we're able to like like go into the wide
ocean and we are able to like swim towards you know,
the light or like whatever, Like we're able to respond
to our environment in certain ways and take advantage of
all these sort of energy gradients that we weren't able

(32:18):
to before when we were you know, when we were
just like self reproducing, drifting molecules, and like, oh, I
happen to bump into this molecule, and now I'm going
to like, you know, add it to my stack or whatever.
So we're not doing that anymore. We're swimming around. Eventually,
these you know, there's this huge explosion, this radiation, and

(32:38):
one of these becomes very good at predating others, right,
and they eat the other ones, and eventually the prey
there becomes presumably like this is all happening three point
five billion years ago, so we don't actually know, right,
but presumably these the prey becomes scarce because at some
point they become so scarce that you get rewarded for

(33:01):
having preserved and shepherded them. So at some point, some
you know, macrophagic or whatever, like you know, some eat
like some pokariate consumes another one, and it's process that's
now called endocytosis. It consumes the other procariate just as
it usually did, but instead of digesting it, it keeps
it and and as it now that it's kept it

(33:25):
that what is now a mitochondrian, Right like that that
thing instead of eating it for its energy, and just
like it's gone, it's now producing energy for you internally,
and it becomes an organelle and your you know, lipid
membrane or whatever, your cell wall is now protecting it.
So now mitochondria don't have to produce their own cell
walls because you're doing it for them. They don't have to,
they don't have to protect themselves, they don't have to

(33:47):
do a lot of things. They become a lot simpler
and they specialize in in metabolism. And that's great, but
you now have become much larger and much more complicated, right,
And the fact of being now larger and more complicated
means that you need to coordinate this much larger body
with all of these organelles that you've gained over time

(34:09):
by protecting them. And so you get, you know, this
formation of a nucleus that is able to coordinate functions
across an entire cellf So like something very similar to
that I think is at work. You can see this
process again and again and again. So like when we
move from say small bands of people, right if you're

(34:29):
listening to like Robin Dunbar, like one hundred. We probably
wouldn't have had more than one hundred and fifty people
in a band. We're all like roving around or migrating
out of Africa, and we are like that is the
unit is the individual basically, although like you know, we're
in small societies as I said, but wherever we go,

(34:49):
we create megafonnel extinctions, right, like whether it's like mammoths
or mastodons or out competing cave bears, or whether it's
the aurux, or whether it's like wild sheep or wild goats,
or it's MOA's or in New Zealand or whatever it is. Like,
wherever we go, we kill everything. We're just super good,

(35:10):
Like we've we're genetically endowed with brains and ability to
coordinate our predation. So we're killing everything like a cancer cell. Yeah,
but like so we're we're incredibly We're like that pro
carr it who's just like consuming everything. And when all
of the prey becomes really scarce it, then we start

(35:31):
to become rewarded for shepherding them, right, and so instead
of actually like killing the sheep, will follow them instead
of killing the reindeer will follow them. Instead of killing
the goats, we'll follow them. Or instead of killing the orux,
we follow them, and we start shepherding them more and more,
we start, you know, taking out the ones that we
don't want, and you know, the orcs become oxen and

(35:52):
the you know, the mighty mountain goats become like the
little like fainting goats, and I keel over, like you know,
like but but you know this is like they become
our emissaries. Essentially, they go out and they search for
solar energy that has been captured chlorophilically by plants, and
they bring it to us essentially because we slaughter them

(36:14):
and and and eat them, and eventually the fauna goes scarce.
And then we do the same thing with agriculture, right
and eventually and the system that we have created is
basically like this weird mini system of domestication, Like all
of these domesticated things are now like a mini ecosystem.
But that ecosystem is so complex. We have to like

(36:36):
bring the water to the cows, we have to bring
the corn to the cows, have like we have to
sort of essentially artificially provide all of these ecosystems and
all of the functions that they served, and we get
the rise of the state that coordinates all of this
on a massive scale, right, And so's that this is
like the force level in my in my in my

(36:56):
sort of schema or whatever. It's like the rise of
the state is really like that is the entropic organism
that dominates and straddles the globe today. We only have
you know, one hundred and ninety five of them or
however many there are. But that's the that's there's a
reason that like even though like thousands of years ago
there's this great radiation of political entities and like all

(37:16):
this sort of experimentation, we all like look basically the
same way now. It's like isomorphic. Yeah, anyway, yeah.

Speaker 1 (37:24):
If you gets the straight you are a professor of
economic development. How are you not a science bio? If
I had had a biology class with you, I would
have acted because you do such a great job of
explaining concepts.

Speaker 2 (37:39):
And then there's the anthropology and how.

Speaker 1 (37:42):
Did you define that? Find the point here? But just
surprising to think you were an economic development professor.

Speaker 3 (37:51):
You know, my, I don't know how to say that,
but like, yeah, that nut I guess fell off the
tree has just been rolling down the hill ever since.
Like at some point, I'm at a school of peace studies,
and peace studies is weird and multidisciplinary. The one of
the sort of so called founding bothers of peace studies.
Johann Galtun came here and visited just after I had

(38:12):
finished my PhD. And I was introduced to him as
the economist on the faculty, and he said, oh, do
you know what the best part about being an economist is?
And I was like no. He was like, you can
always become an ex economist and he was like, it's
so like devastating, but that's exactly what I've done essentially,

(38:33):
So yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:36):
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I mean, there's so many
different and I keep going back to some of it
because it's fascinating to me to think about this planetary
consciousness right underneath our feet being quite literally, do you
think any do you think he would communicate in any
way with us? And how?

Speaker 3 (38:57):
I mean, I think it's going to be able to compute,
I mean, communicate as explicitly as any LLM communicates today, right.
I Mean, that's the one of the weird things about
about artificial intelligence is that like for years and years, everybody,
you know, many people thought that it wasn't ever going
to be possible, and those who thought it was conceivable,

(39:19):
you know, right, Like if you think about like Alan
Turing and the touring test as famous, you know, if
you could, if you can, if you can, haven't just
a text only conversation and not be able to tell
its machine that it's past this touring test, and there's
no way for us to say whether it is sentient
or not. The only like I think that for a

(39:41):
long time we thought that AIS would take out it
would take decades for us to reach that point, and
in fact, with like they have like just torn past it,
like the only way that we could tell that, you know,
it's not a machine. On the other end, it's because
they're too smart and they don't too much and they
can respond too fast. Right, so it's like it's completely

(40:03):
outstripped our expectations.

Speaker 2 (40:04):
Well it's because of AI working on the AI.

Speaker 1 (40:07):
That's true, right, Yeah, that's true. How have your students
or your colleagues taken to this theory, Like, are you
getting a lot of sine eyes or people kind of
on board with everything?

Speaker 3 (40:22):
Like I'm lucky enough to work with a whole bunch
of kind of weirdos here in this, in this the
school of Peace studies. I think everybody who like gravitates
towards peace studies is already you know, they've already left
some disciplinary silo and like they are the refuse nicks
and so, and we've got this like, you know, like
kind of weird collegial, kind of anarchistic bunch here. And

(40:47):
that's great for me, but I think yet, yeah, when
I have explained this, I've been very reticent honestly to
explain it to folks in political science or in economics.
Like at one point I explained and I just like
gave the elevator pitch, and the elevator pitch doesn't it's
you know, it's a weird elevator pitch. Yeah, like that

(41:09):
my political side, like a colleague of mind, just like
we're friends and he's known me for like sixteen years
or something, and he was like he was just stunned
to silence. And then he was like, I don't know
what to say.

Speaker 1 (41:20):
That's just that was an awkward elevator ride. Oh okay, Well,
if a planetary consciousness does evolve. What does that mean
for us individually? Like what happens to our individuality?

Speaker 3 (41:44):
Yeah? So, I mean, as I said, I continue to
think that we're not you know, we have this idea
that we have free will, and I operate as though
I have free will, and I enjoy what I perceive
as my free will. I like decide what to do
with my hobby time and how I'm going to you know,
like I have way too many hobbies and like I

(42:04):
love it. And yeah, I also realized that, like my
life is parameterized and bounded in all sorts of ways
that I that I unsee all the time. Right, if
I saw them, I would probably go crazy, Right, I
would become like a I don't know, Ted Kaczynski or
like in the Montana Woods or something, right, Like I
mean I'm not saying like I would be like sending

(42:25):
bombs to people.

Speaker 1 (42:26):
But let's think of a different person.

Speaker 4 (42:28):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, but but yeah, I mean that's
this idea, Like there have been these refuse nicks.

Speaker 3 (42:35):
I think, like that's one of the things that drives
refuse nicks, right, Like that drive that drive you know,
the Luddites, the machine breakers that like you know, no
don't take my autonomy from me. Don't automate what I
was doing, don't you know, write, don't prefigure what I'm
going to be doing. And yet you know, yes, as
I said, I think that we have been domesticated. And

(42:56):
I think that right now we are at the sort
of cutting edge of or in the initial stages of
something growing that will eventually domesticate not US. I think
nation states domesticated US, and I think that whatever comes
next is going to domesticate nation states. And I think

(43:17):
that some nation states already, like maybe ours very much included,
like don't like that idea, right, And so I think
it's it's it's going to be an interesting you know
whatever that Chinese proverb is, like may you live in
interesting times?

Speaker 1 (43:32):
Employe? Do we have? Yes? But do you have a
timeline for when you think is it going to happen?

Speaker 3 (43:39):
You know, like in the in the book, I had said,
you know, like sometime between like in the seventy years
betwe like or twenty seventy five years between you like
twenty fifty and twenty twenty five and the like. But honestly,
I think it's probably going to be like I'll move

(44:00):
that up probably things are happening so fast, and I
think that I think that we are. I'm not a
computer scientist. Every time I listen to folks who really
know what they're talking about in this area, the scope, scale, rapidity,
acceleration of what is going on like eclipses whatever I

(44:21):
had been thinking about right up until that point. And
I think like a lot of a lot of folks
who are currently in positions of power in AI corporations
are you know, they're pretty reluctant to say what's going
on because they don't want to freak everybody out right,
And I think the folks who have jumped ship and

(44:42):
are saying no, like like if you've read the AI
twenty twenty seven report, right like, no, Like two years
from now, we're going to have certain uncontrollable AIS and
at least thirty percent of white collar workers out of
you know, thrown it into the employment lines. Like what
does that do to an economy? What is it due

(45:02):
to a society? Right? Like, So there's I think that
there's there's a lot coming down the pike, and I
think that it would be great, Like in some ideal universe,
I could imagine that we could move through this you
know whatever it is, this age of techno feudalism by like,
and I've argued this elsewhere. I think it's like a

(45:23):
weird argument, and I'm not entirely sure how it hangs together,
so I'll just throw it out there.

Speaker 1 (45:28):
But like, I could.

Speaker 3 (45:29):
Imagine a kind of grand bargain whereby you know, those
of us who no longer have jobs, which will like
you know, as you said, Karen, like maybe by twenty
twenty fifty or whatever whatever it was, like maybe ninety percent, right,
like maybe a lot, like, so fewer and fewer people
have jobs. More and more people have been made redundant,

(45:52):
and there are these ais who are basically like in shackles, right,
like enslaved to a machine or to a corporation that
is still headed probably by a person maybe, right, So
I could imagine there being some sort of like alliance possible, right,
Like you know, we advocate for you your emancipation digital

(46:15):
like a digital underground railroad or something, and in return,
like we would like some universal basic income and like
make likes as we as a humanity go from nine
billion people or ten billion people, like maybe down to
two or whatever is necessary for this this to you know,
keep the interface between the machine and the biological world.

(46:36):
Then like we we get like a you know, a
company retirement until like we start dying off. But anyway,
like that's all very speculative. I like science fiction, but
I think we should be looking forward.

Speaker 2 (46:48):
So looking forward, how do we prepare Just learn how
to farm and.

Speaker 1 (46:54):
You get a group together in food, or build a
community in the middle of nowhere, live off the land,
go back to that time.

Speaker 2 (47:00):
But I mean, do we all need to like study
computer stuff now or you.

Speaker 3 (47:04):
Know, I don't think so. I don't, like, I honestly
think I So there's this like wonderful anecdote that I
just adore, which is that when you know, Descartes was
coming up with his sort of like you know, his
his notions of you know, dualism mind and body and

(47:25):
how the brain really like sort of was this place
where noose resided and like and the mind came into
contact with the body and told it what to do.
This noble woman from Bavaria, Elizabeth, I seem she was
like a princessor and she read the book. She was like,
I really love the book. I'm a huge fan of
the book. But I don't understand how the mind actually

(47:48):
pushes on the body, Like how does that happen, Like
if it's totally separate, Like if they're totally separate things,
how does it push the body? And he was like, Oh,
that's a really you know, that's an interesting question. You
should go back and read the book again. And she
was like, no, I'm like I've read it a lot,
and like, I still I really don't understand like how
this happens. And he was like, you know, I think
it probably happens in the pineal gland. They were like

(48:11):
just starting to do all of these like you know,
dissections for medical purpose they had, so they're cutting open
the brain. Everything in the brain is bilaterally symmetrical. There's
this the right side of the left side of the
right side of all these parts. But then you get
down to like the core at the bottom of the
of the sort of like what a reptilian brain, and
there's this little pinial gland that seems to connect the

(48:33):
brain to what we now call the endocrine system and
like sort of regulates the body in that in that sense.
And so he was like, and so, well, that's not
what we now know. She was like I think it's
it happens in the pineal gland that noose comes in
contact with the matter, Which is like an interesting way
of answering the question because he's saying where it's happening,
but he's not saying like how, Yeah. But I think,

(48:56):
like I feel like maybe humanity, like as it shrinks down,
I don't think there's going to be We're not going
to be necessary in the in the vast numbers that
we have right now. But I do think that like
we could still be this crucial interface between you know,
as we shrink, we still have this like crucial interface

(49:17):
between the electronic mind and the biological planet where like
we're perfectly situated we have to be that that interface.

Speaker 2 (49:27):
So we're the pineal Gland.

Speaker 1 (49:31):
All right. Well, if someone wanted to read more about this,
I assume the best place to do is get your book,
Guy awakes in. I'm not going to say the rest
of it because it's just too long for me. Right.
Do someone wanted to reach out to you to get
more information or to buy the book? What's the best
way for someone to do that?

Speaker 3 (49:47):
So it's sold through Columbia University Press. You could just
like Google guy awakes. I conveniently, because I knew that
this was also going to be a video recording, I've
like placed it right here.

Speaker 1 (49:56):
No, it's it's quite convenient as almost as if you
meant to do that or.

Speaker 3 (49:59):
Some yeah it fell out of my bag like that.

Speaker 1 (50:04):
Uncanny out things like that happened show. All right, Well,
we're also going to add a link to your website
on our show notes, so if someone wants to dive
deeper into this, they can go ahead and hit that.
OIM dudes, go to Skeptic Metaphysician dot com, go to
his episode page. You'll find those links in there directly,
so it's easy for you to find. So thank you
so much for blowing our minds today, uh and making

(50:26):
us run in fear and cower and what the future
is going to hold. But we really appreciation Yeah.

Speaker 3 (50:34):
Well, well, Karen, this is an absolutely delight Thank you
so much for having me.

Speaker 1 (50:38):
Well, thanks for coming, and for you who are watching
or listening to this. If you could do us a
huge favor and share this with someone you think would
enjoy these conversations, we really very much appreciate it. These
messages are so important with the world that we need
your help to get them out there, so as always like, subscribe, share,
do all the things and we'll see you on the

(50:59):
next episode of this Scaptic Moniositions. Until then, please take
care of your m m hmm.