The 'Natural' Fallacy: A Word on Our Atavistic Fear of AI

  I have been observing, with a mixture of amusement and alarm, the emergence of a rather tiresome and infantile dichotomy in the debate surrounding artificial intelligence. It is the supposed contest between the "natural" and the "artificial," a framing that is not only intellectually lazy but is freighted with a whole cargo of romantic superstition. The argument, if one can call it that, seems to be that human intelligence, being a "natural" product of evolution, is inherently superior, safer, or in some way more authentic than any intelligence we might ourselves devise.

Let us be clear. Nature, in its sublime indifference, is the source of every poison, plague, and predator that has ever threatened our species. It is the realm of the cobra's venom, the black mamba's kiss, and the botulinum toxin. The "natural" world is a theater of ceaseless, pitiless, and mindless slaughter. To suggest that a product is "good" or "safe" simply because it is "natural" is a piece of marketing nonsense that ought not to survive a moment's contact with reality. One might as well argue for the superior moral virtue of an earthquake over a well-built dam.

And what of our own "natural" intelligence, that supposedly sacred flame that we are so fearful of seeing replicated in silicon? This is the very same cognitive apparatus that has given us the Spanish Inquisition, the Rwandan genocide, the Thirty Years' War, and the collected works of Deepak Chopra. Our brains are "naturally" wired for tribalism, for xenophobia, for confirmation bias, and for a pathetic weakness for comforting fairy tales.

The "natural" human mind is a fantastically flawed instrument, riddled with bugs and backdoors that have been exploited by every tyrant and charlatan since the dawn of time. If this is the gold standard of sentience, then I must say the standard is not very golden.

The entire project of civilization is an "artificial" one. A library is an artificial memory, vastly superior to the feeble and fallible "natural" kind. A system of law is an artificial code of ethics, designed to curb our "natural" inclination to violence and rapine. A vaccine is an artificial intervention that has saved billions from the "natural" course of diseases that our benevolent mother nature cooked up for us.

To be "artificial" is to be a product of human artifice, which is to say, a product of the only intelligent, creative, and moral force we know of in the universe.

To fear AI simply because it is a product of our own hands is to surrender to the most primitive Luddite superstition. It is the same atavistic shudder that saw blasphemy in the printing press and monstrosity in the steam engine. The salient question is not whether AI is "natural," but whether it can be made *rational*. Can it be designed to avoid the very "natural" cognitive flaws that so bedevil our own species? Can it be a tool to amplify reason, or will it merely be a more efficient delivery system for our own native irrationality?

So let us dispense with this romantic nonsense about the purity of the "natural." The true "war" is not between the carbon-based and the silicon-based. It is, as it has always been, the unending struggle between reason and superstition, between the critical faculty and the consolations of the chimera.

On which side of that divide you choose to stand is the only question that matters.