Image by Midjourney AI, prompt: gracious female mosquito
Mosquitos can be annoying creatures. They bite, itch, and buzz in your ear. They can keep you awake at night, when your body needs rest. And they give heavy hangovers the day after feasting on your blood. They are also amongst the deadliest species in the world, although indirectly. The viruses and parasites that are hitching a ride with the mosquito kill hundreds of thousands of humans each year. As they pierce the skin with six dedicated needles to suck your blood, they show how sophisticated nature’s tools can be. And, as with all beings on this planet, their lives serve a purpose. Their role within the ecosystem goes beyond ‘annoying or killing humans’. The removal of one species, even a seemingly nuisance one, can have far-reaching consequences for an ecosystem. Mosquitos are a source of nourishment for fish, amphibians, and other aquatic insects. Birds, bats, and other insectivores depend on adult mosquitoes as a part of their diet. Mosquitos are also pollinators, helping to fertilize flowers and ensure the production of seeds and fruits. And they play a vital role in recycling nutrients in aquatic ecosystems. As they lay their eggs in water bodies, the hatched larvae feed on organic waste, breaking down organic matter, returning essential nutrients to the ecosystem and promoting the health of aquatic habitats. A gracious act indeed.
Now we have a new metaphorical mosquito in town: AI. A very noisy and itchy mosquito, this one. Over the past few months, we have experienced a good dose of xenophobia and fear around this new arrival. Much like the horseless carriage (better known as the car) was announced as creating ‘trouble’ in a 1908 article in the New York Times:
“To those who occupy or drive them, they are undoubtedly a fascinating amusement. The speed of which they are capable intoxicates and bewilders the senses, and deadens them to the dangers which surround the machine, and by a sudden mishap may turn in the twinkling of an eye into a terrible engine of destruction.”
AI is looked at with wary eyes. As if the dystopian sci-fi scenarios are already playing out, the media have announced AI to surely destroy humanity, signing humans up to be the next ‘dodo’. Elon Musk’s statement that ‘AI is potentially more dangerous than nukes (nuclear weapons)’ also didn’t help.
I’m observing all this as a severe case of the ‘Stravinsky Syndrome’, which Emily Conrad in her book ‘Life on Land’ defines as the reactive fury that stifles new learning and violently stamps out creative fire. When Stravinsky played his famous ballet ‘The Rite of Spring’ in 1913 he elicited a classically violent reaction from an audience not ready for the new theatrical experience that was being offered. Because misunderstanding breeds suspicion, fear, and even mass hysteria, this is a great time for those who know a little bit more about AI to breed grace instead of fear. To turn people’s heads to emerging futures in which AI doesn’t go rogue, but becomes a gracious partner of us all. To show gracious examples of AI helping us to regenerate the planet at unprecedented scale, or invent bio-based materials that solve our waste problems, and take giant steps in upgrading and redistributing healthcare across the globe, and the list goes on, and on, and on.
Instead of seeing AI as the new ‘nuke’, I rather see it as a new kind of mosquito. A mosquito that bites in wonderful ways. And while it may carry a virus or parasite sometimes, often its bite is harmless and brings something to the surface for all of us: questions of apocalypse, the nature of reality, the values we truly wish to embody, AI is bringing them all up.
Also, what’s rather cool about this mosquito, is that it bites everyone differently. Each bite is specifically tailored to how this human’s perception is still cloaked. AI bit me in wonderful ways too. Over the past few months I’ve had to dive deep into the abyss, to step up my game and share the research I’ve been doing on AI for the past six years on bigger stages, for bigger audiences, than before. Scary but satisfying. It also bit me to move through any resistance and perfectionism that kept this Substack project on the shelf for quite some time, actually.
It’s like more ears are flapping to hear about ethics than ever before, and move beyond ethics into embodied ethics. Because with AI, we have all the knowledge of the world at our fingertips, but intellectual knowledge is not enough to solve the problems we face. To move on with integrity and grace, we need to practice what we preach.
After the age of greenwashing, we now enter the age of AI-misalignment. We only have to visit the website of one of the leading AI companies and see the beautiful promises, the values and codes-of-conduct that they promise to abide by. But in practice, do they really embody these ethics? AI bites in wonderful ways. It shows us where words are just that, words. Not lived experience. Not hard-earned grace. For gracious AI to emerge, we have to embody grace, first. And so the discussion around the ethics of AI, to me, is less about matters of governance and codes-of-conduct, and more about matters of the heart and soul, matters of grace. I have spent a lot of time contemplating the meaning of grace over the past six years. I found that grace is hiding in seemingly dreadful things. In small and large things, in dying and itchy things. That grace is a vortex of love that flows through life and turns whatever is not aligned to the principles of nature into food - for the hatched larvae of the mosquito, who will be returning nutrients back to the ecosystem so that can be reborn in a new shape or form. Just like that.
To me, grace seems to be the essence of who you truly are, coming through the form. When you have a state of grace activated in you, you’re not the density of the form, you are anchored in the amorphous. When you embody grace, you live your ethics, and your lens of the world shifts from a linear to a circular one, in tune with the principles of nature. You become an agent for nature. Your mission shifts to designing equitable, ethical, and ecocentric futures. Your work is to surrender control, and let nature’s grace move you. Your work is to suspend all knowing and allow yourself to not know, a little longer. To transmute everything that is no longer in alignment in the loving arms of grace. Allowing the emotional intensity of this moment. The worry about what’s next for humanity. As well as give way to the insights, the ideas, the innovations, that will pave the way for gracious futures to become real.
I am often asked: if we know about the risks of AI, but we’re not the ones who release this massive mosquito into the world, what can we do? What can we do, if all the itch of the world goes to the irresponsible boys in Silicon Valley and they may not even feel it and go about their ways, what can we do?
My answer is: focus on yourself first. AI bites in wonderful ways, and so let it bite you too. Let it bite you and see where you have become overly reliant on technology to make decisions for you. Let it bite you and find out where you’re outsourcing your creativity to the machine, and where your humanity, with all its insecurities, its mortality, and its rawness can create work that is relatable and touching, not perfect. AI can render perfect end-results. But isn’t the journey of creativity also about the process? With AI doing many things better than humans can, the focus in art in the coming years will be on the process, and on embodied growth, with a lesser focus on the end-result.
Let it bite you and find out where experiences from the past still run your life, and how you can move beyond them to tap into the space of invention. AI’s learn from the past, but evolution and true problem-solving happen beyond the mind, beyond the past, in divine dimensions of reality. With the advent of AI, we are out of excuses. We have to venture into unknown territory, dive into the dark abyss, and bring down inventions and wisdom unheard of. That is gracious evolution bringing forth gracious AI.
Let it bite you and see where you still try to control any outcome, and where you let your fear of death bind you to time and space. Those who thrive in an increasingly changing world are the ones who are adaptable to change, the ones that don’t let fear dictate them. The ones who are attuned to their wildness and relationship with the more-than-human world. Not the ones who are machine like. Those who rely on factual knowledge and intellectual ethics will be in a lesser position for thriving. The future will be much less about doing, as AI will be doing many things for us, the future is much more about being.
And if you’ve done all that, let it bite you and listen, to the songs of the birds, to the wind and the buzzing of bees and mosquitos, and ask them if they worry, too. Let it bite you and lift your awareness beyond the itch, to how you could invest and put your money and time where your mouth is: in AI done well.
There’s much to say about AI going rogue, but there’s more to say about gracious AI. Concerns around new technologies going rogue and our addiction to the comfort of sameness are age-old. We can of course decide to kill this mosquito, but if we do that we miss the opportunity to let it bite us and find out where we’re still ignorant. And so, on Gracious AI Radio I will be talking about and giving materiality to Gracious AI. I say, let AI bite us and invite grace, the unknown and mysterious power of nature, to show us the way back to embodiment, back to grace. One bite at a time.
Thank you for joining the ride.
Lots of ♡, Lisanne
Resources if not in text:
Emily Conrad - Life on Land, the story of Continuum, the world-renowned self-discovery and movement method (North Atlantic Books, 2007)
How mosquitoes use six needles to suck your blood - DEEP LOOK on Youtube
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