AI's Potential Impact on Human Evolution: Smaller Brains, Altered Social Behaviors, and More

Smaller brains? Fewer friends? An evolutionary biologist asks how AI will change humanity's future

UNSW Sydney provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU. What will humans be like generations from now in a world transformed by artificial intelligence (AI)? Plenty of thinkers have applied themselves to questions like this, considering how AI will alter lives - often for better, sometimes for worse. They have conjured dramatic scenarios, like AI-driven extinction of humans (and many other species), or our assimilation into human-AI cyborgs. The predictions are generally grim, pitting the fate of all humans against a unitary (or unified) AI opponent. What if the AI future doesn't stretch to these sci-fi dystopias? For an evolutionary biologist, seeing AI technologies diversify into all manner of applications looks a lot like the proliferation of microbes, plants and animals in an ecological landscape. Which led me to ask: how might human evolution be altered by interactions with a world of rich AI diversity? In a paper just published in The Quarterly Review of Biology, I considered the many ways AI might alter physical, biological and social environments, and how that might influence natural selection. Predicting evolution is a mug's game Natural selection - the mechanism behind evolution - is an inevitable consequence of genetic differences in reproduction among individuals. Those differences arise as a result of interactions with physical features of the environment (like minimum temperatures), with other species (like predators or parasites) and with other members of the same species (like mates, allies or hostile outsiders). When Asian gray wolves started hanging around humans around 30,000 years ago, the more reactive wolves were chased away or killed. This whittled away genes for skittishness and aggression, beginning the process of dog domestication. The inadvertent selection that turned wolves into dogs turns out to be instructive in how AI might inadvertently shape the evolution of human brains and behaviour. "Trying to predict the future is a mug's game," said English author Douglas Adams. This is especially true of technologies like AI. But predicting evolution is, if anything, even more precarious. Combining the two involves considerable speculation, and the very strong possibility of being wrong. At the risk of being wrong, my intention is to start a conversation about how human evolution, and traits that we most value in one another, might be altered by AI. Mutual or parasitic? It might be informative to think of the AI-human relationship as a mutualism - two species each providing the other with something they need. Computers are beasts of computational burden that benefit their human users. Those benefits will grow with developments in AI. There is already evidence that cultural sharing of knowledge and writing lightened the load on individuals to remember everything. As a result, human brains have shrunk over recent millennia. Perhaps AI, online searchable knowledge and social media posts that "remember" who-did-what-to-whom will carry more of our memory burden. If so, perhaps human brains will evolve to become even smaller, with less stand-alone memory. Don't panic. The benefits of smaller brains include safer births for both mother and newborn. And with computers and AI holding ever-growing records and stores of knowledge, humanity will still be able to do remarkable intelligence-driven things... as long as they can access the AI. However, mutualists can take another path. They can evolve into harmful parasites - organisms that live at the expense of another organism, their host. You could think of social media platforms as parasitic. They started out providing useful ways to stay connected (mutualism) but so captured our attention that many users no longer have the time they need for human-human social interactions and sleep (parasitism). If AI learns to capture user attention ever more effectively, stoking anger and fomenting social comparison, the consequences for who lives, dies and reproduces will affect evolution. In the best of a series of bleak scenarios, the ability to resist social media or remain unmoved by rage-bait might evolve to be stronger. Intimacy with computers Important as other species were to human evolution, interactions with other humans were even more formative. Now AIs are sliding into our social lives. The growth of "artificial intimacy" - technologies that emulate our social behaviours like making friends and forming intimate relationships - is among the most astounding areas of AI progress. Humans haven't evolved a social capacity for dealing with computers. So, we apply our "tools" for dealing with other humans to machines. Especially when those machines converse with us via text, voice or video. In our interactions with people, we keep an eye on the possibility the other person is not being genuine. An AI "virtual friend" doesn't have feelings, but users treat them as if they do. Artificial intimacy could make us more wary of interactions over phones or screens. Or perhaps our descendants will feel less lonely without human company and humans will become more solitary creatures. The question is not trivial Speculating about genetic evolution might seem trivial compared with AI's direct effects on individual lives. Brilliant AI researchers and writers are already focused on the way AI will improve or diminish the lives of people who are alive right now. It's not as immediate a concern, then, to worry about distant gene changes AI might influence many generations from now. But it certainly bears thinking about. The pioneering ecologist Robert MacArthur said "there are worse things for a scientist than to be wrong. One is to be trivial". Evolutionary changes over many generations could well change or even diminish some of the human traits we cherish most, including friendship, intimacy, communication, trust and intelligence, because these are the traits AI engages most profoundly. In a non-trivial way, that could alter what it means to be human.

How AI Could Shape Human Evolution in Subtle Yet Profound Ways - Neuroscience News

Summary: Artificial intelligence is becoming a pivotal force in human lives, prompting questions about its evolutionary effects. A new study explores how AI may influence human evolution through everyday interactions, likening human-AI dynamics to ecological relationships such as predation or competition. Potential evolutionary shifts include changes in brain size, attention spans, personality traits, and social behaviors, particularly through AI's impact on relationships and decision-making. While the immediate cultural and psychological effects are significant, the study predicts gradual genetic impacts, though forecasting such evolution remains highly uncertain. This nuanced exploration underscores the profound yet unpredictable role AI could play in shaping humanity's future. As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more common and sophisticated, its effects on human lives and societies raises new questions. A new paper published in The Quarterly Review of Biology posits how these new technologies might affect human evolution. In "How Might Artificial Intelligence Influence Human Evolution?" author Rob Brooks considers the inevitable but incremental evolutionary consequences of AI's everyday use and human-AI interactions -- without "dramatic but perhaps unlikely events, including possibilities of human annihilation, assimilation, or enslavement." In the paper, Brooks considers ("often with considerable speculation") some possible forms of human-AI interaction and the evolutionary implications of such interactions via natural selection, including forms of selection that resemble the inadvertent and deliberate selection that occurred when humans domesticated crops, livestock, and companion animals. He argues that technologies that deploy AI interact with humans and affect their lives in ways that can be understood by considering the kinds of biotic relationships between individuals of different species such as predators and prey, hosts and parasites, and biological competitors. "The ways such interspecies interactions have shaped animal evolution, including human evolution, can provide some basis for predicting how AI might influence human evolution in the future," he notes. Human-AI interactions can resemble human-human social interactions, with computers, and especially AI-driven technologies, becoming increasingly important social actors. It is in these interactions that much of the potential for AI to influence human evolution lies. Through that lens, Brooks' review examines AI's possible effects on matchmaking (such as dating apps), intimacy, virtual friendships, and the criminal justice system. He extracts several predictions, including the acceleration of recent evolutionary trends toward smaller brains, selection on attention spans, personality types, and mood-disorder susceptibilities. He also hypothesizes changes in intimacy-building and mating competition due to AI applications may influence the evolution of social behavior. Brooks concludes that the cumulative effects of human-AI interactions on human differential reproduction and, thereby, gene frequencies and patterns of inheritance, are likely to be small relative to the immediate effects of those interactions on individual lives, well-being and happiness, and the effects on cultural evolution, keeping in mind that predicting how AI might change humanity is difficult and prone to error. "The direction and rate of evolution can be hard to predict even for organisms kept under controlled conditions," he writes. "Far more so the complexities of predicting selection and resulting evolution of humans in a fast-moving AI-rich world." How Might Artificial Intelligence Influence Human Evolution? As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more common and sophisticated, its effects on human lives and societies are attracting considerable attention. The question of how these new technologies might affect human evolution remains far less often asked, and most attempts focus on dramatic but perhaps unlikely events, including possibilities of human annihilation, assimilation, or enslavement. This article considers instead the inevitable but incremental evolutionary consequences of AI's everyday use and human-AI interactions. I consider some possible forms of human-AI interaction, and the evolutionary implications of such interactions via natural selection, including forms of selection that resemble the inadvertent and deliberate selection that occur during domestication. The direction and rate of evolution can be hard to predict even for organisms kept under controlled conditions. Far more so the complexities of predicting selection and resulting evolution of humans in a fast-moving AI-rich world. Nonetheless, I extract several predictions, including the acceleration of recent trends toward smaller brains, selection on attention spans, personality types, and mood-disorder susceptibilities. Further, changes in intimacy-building and mating competition due to AI applications that act as friends and intimates are likely already affecting mating success and may influence the evolution of social behavior.

Human evolution in an AI world: Predicting changes in brain size, attention and social behaviors

As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more common and sophisticated, its effects on human lives and societies raises new questions. A new paper published in The Quarterly Review of Biology posits how these new technologies might affect human evolution. In "How Might Artificial Intelligence Influence Human Evolution?" author Rob Brooks considers the inevitable but incremental evolutionary consequences of AI's everyday use and human-AI interactions -- without "dramatic but perhaps unlikely events, including possibilities of human annihilation, assimilation, or enslavement." In the paper, Brooks considers ("often with considerable speculation") some possible forms of human-AI interaction and the evolutionary implications of such interactions via natural selection, including forms of selection that resemble the inadvertent and deliberate selection that occurred when humans domesticated crops, livestock, and companion animals. He argues that technologies that deploy AI interact with humans and affect their lives in ways that can be understood by considering the kinds of biotic relationships between individuals of different species such as predators and prey, hosts and parasites, and biological competitors. "The ways such interspecies interactions have shaped animal evolution, including human evolution, can provide some basis for predicting how AI might influence human evolution in the future," he notes. Human-AI interactions can resemble human-human social interactions, with computers, and especially AI-driven technologies, becoming increasingly important social actors. It is in these interactions that much of the potential for AI to influence human evolution lies. Through that lens, Brooks' review examines AI's possible effects on matchmaking (such as dating apps), intimacy, virtual friendships, and the criminal justice system. He extracts several predictions, including the acceleration of recent evolutionary trends toward smaller brains, selection on attention spans, personality types, and mood-disorder susceptibilities. He also hypothesizes changes in intimacy-building and mating competition due to AI applications may influence the evolution of social behavior. Brooks concludes that the cumulative effects of human-AI interactions on human differential reproduction and, thereby, gene frequencies and patterns of inheritance, are likely to be small relative to the immediate effects of those interactions on individual lives, well-being and happiness, and the effects on cultural evolution, keeping in mind that predicting how AI might change humanity is difficult and prone to error. "The direction and rate of evolution can be hard to predict even for organisms kept under controlled conditions," he writes. "Far more so the complexities of predicting selection and resulting evolution of humans in a fast-moving AI-rich world."