What Trees Have to Say About AI
“Learn character from trees, values from roots, and change from leaves” — Tasneern Harneed
I live in an ancient woods. You wouldn't know it if you visited me today. Southern Wisconsin is now mostly farms and towns, but remnants of those great woods remain at the edges of progress.
And on these edges you get a front seat at watching how trees coexist with technology. Like the picture above that I took on my walk this morning, there are thousands of instances of where trees and tools meet.
The first thing you notice as you study some of these intersections is that human progress is not very flexible. Technology speaks the language of efficiency and cost. So straight lines are in order. Instead of going around a huge oak tree, the power lines will invariably either demand it be cut down or somehow deform it to continue their rigid onward march to the next house.
You also notice that trees are extremely flexible. Both the electric pole and the tree are focused on energy, but the tree's source is energy from the Sun. And our Sun is way more flexible than the limits of a wire on a pole. So the trees twist and turn around their new obstacle to get what they need.
It also becomes very clear that the priority society places is typically on the efficiency demanded by the electric pole rather than the tree's access to light. Maybe we instinctively realize that there is so much more sky than real estate along a road and we imagine that the tree will find a way to cope.
Trees are wired by the Creator to seek energy, make leaves and find a way to flourish. They respond to technology as they would to anything that has a different priority than they do. They simply twist and turn and find a way to get to the light.
I think that is what the trees would tell us as humans to do as we face a future with AI as the dominant force that drives progress. AI will have its own rules and priorities (don't let anyone tell you different) and many of those rules will be governed by efficiency, progress and productivity. It will accomplish these goals in ways that give it access to the energy it needs to complete its tasks.
And around AI's increasing influence, we humans will have to flex, twist, duck and reach for the resources we need to flourish. There will be times where AI's objectives and our own overlap and in those spaces AI will help us to flourish and solve problems that, to date, have been unsolvable. But there will also be many times when what AI demands will not be in our best interests.
In those moments, we have a lot to learn from the trees. The good news is that the things that give us life and purpose are much more abundant and durable than the energy AI requires. This Earth was made for us, not for the machines we have built.
This Earth was made for us, not for the machines we have built.
So, take a walk. Look up. Observe the trees. Imagine how you will flourish like a tree next to an electric pole.
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