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As The “AI Wars” Heat Up, Stop And Think About What Makes You Human
I don’t mean to get super deep here or anything. You’re theoretically alive and reading this and human and you have day-to-day responsibilities and people you interact with and friends and family. Most people don’t think about it much deeper than that, right? Do your thing, chase your dream, build your company, raise your family, etc. People come in and out of your life, and some losses are harder; some are barely felt. This is, broadly speaking, the way of humanity.
But sometimes it’s interesting to stop and reflect on what exactly makes us human, and why humanity became the dominant frontier of the last few thousand years … as opposed to, say, a colony of lions running the world, or even a colony of arts.
The real difference between us and other animals is on the collective level. Humans control the world because we are the only animal that can cooperate flexibly in large numbers. Ants and bees can also work together in large numbers, but they do so in a very rigid way. If a beehive…
