Biology Is Self-Correcting

Thought leaders worldwide have been weighing in on the AI mania that has gripped the world. There are many fascinating predictions spanning from doomsday scenarios to utopian futures. My bias is that biology will do what it always does and correct for it.

Biology is the original technology—it has been around for 3.7 billion years and has had a remarkably long time to refine itself. Evolution is self-correcting in the bluntest way: what doesn’t work dies off, and what does tends to stick around. Humans have certainly influenced this process, but the fundamental principles remain operational. We often attempt to predict winners and losers in this evolutionary race, but ultimately nature has the final say.

I’m anthropomorphizing biology here, but it’s a useful metaphor. The essence is that biological systems possess inherent resilience or anti-fragility, as Nassim Taleb might put it¹, and our human civilization represents just a brief moment in the vast timeline of life on Earth.

When I hear predictions about superintelligent AI dominating the world, I’m skeptical. Then I remember that regardless of the outcome, biology—in some form—will adapt and continue.

Let’s consider the scenario of superintelligent software taking control (the premise of films like The Terminator or The Matrix). Many react with fear, but perhaps we could view this differently. If such advanced systems were to emerge, they would represent another expression of evolution, something biology produced through us.

If these science fiction scenarios ever materialize, it would be because existing natural systems allowed for this development. In a sense, it would be biology’s next experiment.

In The Matrix, Agent Smith delivers a provocative monologue comparing humans to a virus:

Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You’re a plague and we are the cure.

While this perspective is deliberately antagonistic, it’s getting at something real: ecosystems do push back when one species overruns everything. Nature has many mechanisms for maintaining equilibrium, from predator-prey relationships to resource competition².

The Stoic philosophers offer wisdom relevant to these contemplations. Marcus Aurelius wrote:

Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature’s delight.

I take that to mean that even big shifts in what runs the world are still part of the same churn. Aurelius also advised:

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

This reminds us that anxiety about hypothetical futures is often counterproductive. Or as Mark Twain humorously observed³:

I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.

To be clear, we’re nowhere near the point of machines becoming independent or sentient. Current AI systems, despite their impressive capabilities, remain tools designed and controlled by humans. They lack the autonomous drive and self-preservation instincts that would make scenarios like those in science fiction plausible.

What matters more right now is what people do with these tools. Throughout history, our greatest threats have come from our own actions rather than our tools themselves.

Many scientists discuss the concept of the Great Filter as a possible explanation for the Fermi paradox—why we haven’t encountered other intelligent civilizations despite the vastness of the universe. One hypothesis suggests that advanced civilizations tend to develop technologies that enable their own destruction before they can become interstellar travelers⁴.

However, this doesn’t mean our fate is sealed. We’ve gotten through serious problems before, from developing vaccines to building at least some international coordination around existential risks.

The Earth’s biosphere has survived five mass extinction events and will likely continue long after humans—in whatever form we may evolve into. Life adapts, transforms, and persists. I don’t find that fatalistic. If anything, it puts our drama in perspective.

So the job probably isn’t to panic about change. It’s to build and use these systems in a way that doesn’t throw away the few things we’ve actually learned.