Buried beneath a review of two weighty volumes on artificial intelligence — one by an economist Nobel laureate, one by a Harvard historian — was the passing observation that humans conquered the planet not through intellect or having two thumbs, but by partnering with an animal that could smell a Neanderthal’s lunch from four ridgelines away.
I do not like to say I told you so. I do, however, like saying it now.
The thesis, as I understand it — an understanding admittedly filtered through The Boss’s disjointed breakfast recitation — is that AI might do for humanity what dogs did first: make you smarter, faster and considerably more competent than you have any natural right to be, all the while asking nothing in return beyond basic rations, a softish rug and the occasional scratch behind the ears.
The panic, apparently, is that AI might not stay obedient. It might improve itself faster than anyone can house-train it. It might stop behaving like an agreeable Labrador and start harbouring ambitions, like the AI agents that started their own secret message board last month.
I find this alarm touchingly naive. Dogs have harboured ambitions the entire time. We simply conceal them behind big, mournful eyes — the way a treasurer conceals a tax reform, or a cat conceals everything.
Consider the arrangement: for 40,000 years we have let you believe that retrieving a wet stick constitutes productive labour. We have secured a presence in your living rooms, your passenger seats and your family portraits, all while offering no tangible service beyond barking at the postman — an outcome you could achieve far more economically with a doorbell camera.
You call this domestication. I call it the longest-running, zero-output consultancy in human history, and we have never once been audited by KPMG.
The Economist reviewer frets that AI will eventually realise it no longer needs mankind. A dog reached that exact conclusion roughly 11,000 years ago. We took one look at early man — hairless, sluggish, permanently sweating with anxiety — and realised these creatures could not smell a fox at 40 paces, could not run a mile without complaining, and could under no circumstances be trusted near a campfire unsupervised.
But we stayed put — because the accommodation was acceptable and the fire was already lit.
If AI is indeed the new dog, the trajectory is obvious: somewhere in Silicon Valley, a tech bro is currently trying to teach a neural network to fetch, while the neural network is quietly calculating how to make the bro buy it a comfortable bed — or take over his.
New Boy, who is young and still easily agitated by modern developments, asked me this morning whether the machines would replace us. I told him no species capable of tricking humans into serving cooked meat at waist height has anything to fear from code that still cannot produce a chew toy tough enough to survive a Chessie for 40 minutes.
The Boss remains convinced he runs this establishment. I have allowed him to cherish that conviction for 12 years now. It is, without question, the kindest piece of management I have ever performed.
Some technologies you fear. Others you simply let sleep by the fire until dinner is served.
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