True. We are at the center of the planet's woes. But not because of anything intrinsic in us--not even our big brains or our gift of language. Rather, the roots of our crisis lie in the hubristic worldview we evolved at the dawn of the Agricultural Revolution--the delusional idea of a distinction between "Man" and "Nature" and with it the toxic idea that we are the "masters" of nature, made in the "image of God." and that our purpose on Earth is to "fill" and "subdue " it.

This is rubbish, as all indigenous, pre-agricultural peoples knew quite well. The Earth is our mother, our biological support system, personified as Gaia, on which we depend as utterly as any other species.

And by and large, AI is just the latest extension of our fantasy of "mastering" nature.

There is an alternative to this madness, however: using our vaunted intelligence to forge a symbiotic relationship with our biological support system, rather than our current parasitic relationship. This is what the Permaculture movement is all about! Technology itself is neutral; it all depends on the uses to which it is put, and whether those uses conduce to a continuation of our parasitism, or whether these technologies can help us learn and teach others how to live in a symbiotic, ecologically responsible way with our biological support systems. That is, how to evolve from being a tumor on Gaia, to being something like her brain...