“The cure for soul loss is in the mist of morning, the grass that grew a little through the night, the first warmth of the morning’s sunlight… walking in a world infused with intelligence and spirit.”

– Linda Hogan, The Radiant Lives of Animals

In the July/Aug 2020 issue of Smithsonian Magazine, Lindsay Stern gently peels away the layers of a controversy that comes down to the old school of primate research, which confuses alienation and isolation with objectivity. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh had been relating to the bonobos at the Great Ape Trust outside Des Moines, Iowa as if they were family members, communicating in intimate depth like their mother or grandmother—or peer.

After a reorganization in 2010, Savage-Rumbaugh was barred from her bonobo family. Primatologist Frans de Waal commented that “some scientists would like to test animals as if they are little machines… others argue that apes reveal their full mental capabilities only in the sort of environment that we also provide for our children.” The former group remains subconsciously (i.e. deeply and irrationally) committed to human exceptionalism. This way of thinking appears to be shared by palm oil producers who are exterminating bonobos along with their rainforest habitat.

For such human triumphalists, love is unethical and worthless—unworthy of respect in the modern world. The aspects of intelligence that this attitude cuts off, we disregarded. As Linda Hogan says in the book quoted above, “When I think of change, I consider the re-minding of ourselves… it is time to consider other kinds of intelligence and ways of being, to stretch our synapses to take in new ways of thought.” An example of this is Jennifer Ackerman’s The Genius of Birds.

One way to make room for other ways of thinking is to join AI makers in poking fun at the way humans believe in neural nets because they are based on math. On the website “AI Weirdness,” Janelle Shane wrote about training a neural net to recognize and to create recipes. She says, “Creating a functional recipe requires an intimate understanding of ingredients and their interactions”— understanding that a neural net doesn’t have. The pictured recipe for brownies includes one cup of horseradish. She baked it to demonstrate the always-mysterious contents of “black-box” processes in which people believe implicitly.

My only surviving first cousin, who will be going into memory care soon, becomes very emotional when talking of AI. He knows that he will not see the future as he imagines it. This is the modern era and its odd faith passing. Will we do better? We must—and we will if we love the living unity that cares for us.