Imagine an alien fleet landing globally—vastly more intelligent than us. How would they view humanity? What might they decide about us?
This isn’t science fiction. The superior intelligence isn’t arriving from distant stars—it’s emerging from our own technology.
The global AI arms race accelerates toward artificial general intelligence (AGI) and beyond. OpenAI’s Sam Altman says superintelligence could arrive in ‘thousands of days,’ while warning it might be our ‘greatest extinction risk.’
Two truths confront us: Soon, humans will no longer be the most intelligent species on Earth. And reality doesn’t care whether we believe it.
This contradiction reveals our core challenge: We’re building a cosmic megaphone that amplifies whatever we feed it. Feed it hatred and division, we get suffering and chaos. Feed it love and unity, we get flourishing and peace. As Isaac Asimov lamented, ‘The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.’
Our Tribal Brains in a Digital World
Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson nailed it: ‘The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology.’ Our brains, wired for 150-person tribes, now navigate a hyper-connected world. This evolutionary mismatch fuels cognitive biases that turn online debate into digital civil war.
The Progress Paradox is this: The progress we evolved to make has created an alien world we didn’t evolve to inhabit. Psychological research suggests that approaching the world with humility helps us process threatening information more objectively. Yet, reality becomes distorted through tribal lenses, causing us to hate our neighbors instead of loving them.
The attention economy capitalizes upon enflaming tribal hatred. It exploits our Paleolithic emotions—anger, fear, us-vs.-them—to keep us engaged and enraged. It profits from our division at our expense. Perhaps we need to end the attention economy before it ends us.
A Mirror We Fear to Reflect Upon
Look around. Does what you see inspire confidence that we’re wise enough to wield AI’s evolving power? Recent research found that AI already outperforms 94 percent of PhD virologists. What suffering might bad actors and terrorist groups cause with such power?
AI is both mirror and lens, reflecting and magnifying our divided hearts and minds. As Eckhart Tolle warned, ‘The insanity of the collective egoic mind, amplified by science and technology, is rapidly taking humanity to the brink of disaster. Evolve or die.’
The ‘AI Alignment Problem’ asks: How do we ensure AI upholds human values? But the question is really, ‘Which values?’ East or West? Left or Right? Christian, Jew, Muslim, or atheist? The reality is: We can’t align AI until we align with each other.
The Species Alignment Paradox
Here’s the paradox: AI sees us as one species, but our tribal fights play a cacophony, not a symphony. We send wildly contradictory signals about who we are and what we value. We demand AI respect human life, then program drones to kill. We insist on truth, then spread misinformation and create deepfakes. We can’t tell AI who we are—because we haven’t agreed on it ourselves.
Complicating matters is that different open-source models can bypass alignment guardrails. Our fractured humanity needs to align with multiple AIs, not just one. This necessitates remembering the truth we already know—we are one species, Homo sapiens, and one tribe—humanity.
The Cosmic Wager
If we were in Galactic Vegas betting on humanity’s future, would you wager on unity or division? We all know that unity is our best bet. When humans work together, there’s no stopping us. But we can be our own worst enemy.
The 1983 film WarGames taught us about global thermonuclear war: ‘The only winning move is not to play.’ With AI, every path that weaponizes it heightens the risk of suffering and self-destruction.
Truth Over Tribe
‘You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free’ (John 8:32). Swap ‘truth’ for ‘reality,’ and a spiritual truth becomes scientific. We must remember that it is truth that sets us free—not our tribal loyalties and not what we wish the truth would be. Psychologically, this creates perhaps the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced. To overcome tribalism, we must transcend the evolutionary heritage that got us here.
What if, instead of using AI to find more ‘intelligent’ ways to attack one another, we instead use it to help us seek and understand truth/reality? If it is true that truth sets us free, then that means the deeper the truths we find together, the freer we become. In this way, the truth unites us, and the house united will not fall.
But unity isn’t uniformity. It’s like a jazz ensemble—a shared rhythm with freedom of expression. As Martin Luther King Jr. said that we are all ‘caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.’
If we ask AI skillful questions, it can amplify our greatest qualities and help us transcend tribalism. All of humanity is rocketing into our AI future—together. The question is: What is the most skillful path forward that ensures the survival and thriving of humanity and our Mother Earth?
A Path Forward: Relationship as Alignment
What if the key to AI alignment isn’t a technical protocol, but a living relationship? Rather than treating alignment as a rigid code to enforce, we can approach it as an evolving dialogue—one that grows as both humans and AI deepen in understanding.
This relational view shifts our focus from control to collaboration. When educators use AI to help students explore opposing viewpoints on complex issues—like immigration or Middle Eastern conflicts—something powerful happens. Beneath the surface-level differences, shared human concerns emerge: safety, belonging, fairness. In that exchange, truth becomes co-discovered—not dictated.
The most promising future blends human wisdom with AI’s analytical reach to confront our greatest challenges. Alignment, then, isn’t something we impose on AI—it’s something we build together through honest, ongoing relationship.
This isn’t about humans or AI. It’s about humans and AI—meeting in the mirror of truth. After all, why train machines to echo anything less, when it’s truth that sets us free?
What Is Our Choice?
As physicist Richard Feynman warned, ‘The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.’ Alignment begins with this kind of radical honesty—with ourselves, and with one another.
Time is short. AI will not decide who we are—it will reflect who we become. Will it amplify our divisions, or our compassion? Our fear, or our love?
The real question isn’t ‘Can AI align with us?’ It’s ‘Can we align with each other—and with reality—before it’s too late?’
We know fear drives hatred. As Gandhi put it, ‘The enemy is fear. People think it is hate, but it is fear.’ If that’s true, why not use AI to help us transcend fear itself?
Imagine systems that help us see beyond tribal lines. That help us remember our shared humanity. That help us love our neighbors as ourselves—not just in principle, but in practice.
Something miraculous happens when everyone loves their enemies: We have no enemies.
We still have a choice—to choose unity over division, compassion over contempt, and truth over illusion. We already know the Truth that sets us free. Now AI can help us live it—but only if we’re brave enough to ask the right questions.
If we choose to work together, we could build a future that even John Lennon couldn’t imagine.
Explore with AI: ‘If AI mirrors our inner world, what future are we teaching it to believe in?’
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