AI and Navajo Prophecy

I’m neither for or against the use of AI. Though I detest generative AI, I realize the useful aspects of machines focused on real world, big issues. I don’t like the feeling of not being able to b escape it, reprimanding myself when I forget to put “- AI” in my search bar, or the insistence that my two-line emails need to be summarized by anything other than my brain and eyeballs.

The detrimental effects on water, mental health and other unexplored environmental impacts frighten me, especially as I watch delicate places scorch to ash.

I don’t know where  we go from here. I don’t know as it’ll wipe out humanity as well as many others species. However, I read something last week that gave me pause.

In 1992, Douglas Preston, a prolific author, met a Navajo elder on his family’s journey through Dinetah on horseback.

The conversation as he wrote it in Talking to the Ground:

“I keep hearing, "I said, "about how we, I mean, the white people, are going to suffer a fate similar to the Anasazi. "

“And I'm supposed to know something” she said, looking at Norman.

“Go ahead," Norman said. "Tell him.” There was a long silence. She said irritably.

“Well”,  she said, “a long time ago when I was a little girl, my grandfather talked about that once. He was a medicine man. I guess it was a very important and sacred piece of information.” She stopped and held her hand and her heads for a moment.

"Oh, I wish I had more sense and asked him what he meant! I was just a kid and I wasn't thinking about things like that. I didn't know anything. And then he died before I grew up and I never had a chance to ask him what he meant. He was very old and wise, and he knew a lot of a sacred things. I never forgot what he said and when I got older, I thought about it more and more. It seems like I'm thinking about it more and more these days. Wondering what he meant. "

"What did he say?"I asked. She looked at Norman.

"Well, he said that the white man was going to create an image of himself. And when that happened, the image would turn and destroy the creator. "

I sat for a moment on the sofa, listening to the cartoons, to the giggling of the two kids, looking into the window with a sink full of dirty dishes and out the window to the paved street and a kid wall along on a battered bicycle.

“This is the fate of the white people?,” I asked doubtfully. "This is how it'll end? "

“Yes”, she said firmly.

“Like cloning a human being or genetic engineering or something like that? "

Silent, looking at her hands. "Maybe. Like I said, I never asked him what he meant. I read about the scientist in Russia and planting a human egg into a gorilla, but I don't know. "There was another pause.

"Well,” she said, “ I'm not sure it was that. He might've meant something else. I think it may had something to do with a machine. Something to do with these powerful computers.”

“Like what?”

"Artificial intelligence. "

I Was a little perplexed. This was more like something out of a science fiction book.

She sat in the plastic easy chair and leaned forward. "At Chaco Canyon, "she said, "the Anasazi had a deep knowledge of nature and sacred things, and they started to misuse that knowledge. They died out because they abused sacred things and they tried to control and dominate nature. They wanted power. They made evil in forbidden drawings on the rock that offended the gods, the holy people… They were like the white man, inventive and creative. They wanted too much. They practiced witchcraft. And then they made a machine. "

A machine?

"An evil, magical machine and it destroyed them. It turned on them and they turned on each other, and there were fires, warrant destruction, and what you see, all those ruins, that's all that's left kind of machine.

Corn, she said. "It was a machine made a corn.” I hardly knew what to think. It seemed unlikely. She saw my puzzled look.

“People were created from corn, she said quietly. "Corn is what gave us life. First man and first woman were created from two years of corn in a sacred ceremony. The Anasazi abused that ceremony. They created false life in a witchcraft ceremony using the sacred corn. Which is just what the white man is doing today with his artificial intelligence and genetic engineering. "

Suddenly. I understood. In the Navajo creation story, the four Talking Gods created first woman and first man by placing the two years of corn between buckskins, and allowing the wind to enter and give them life. The Anasazi of Chaco, according to her, duplicated this ceremony and tried to create false life of some kind. Tried, in short, to create something artificial in their image. Like the mind and a machine. Now I suddenly saw the connection.

"The white man, "she continued, "is a creator, and inventor. From the very beginning, he creates an invent and creates. He sees a river, and he builds a damn dam. He sees coal, so he stripped. He finds uranium, and he makes a bomb. He drove for oil and he sends messages through the wires in the air and makes cars and planes. He messes with nature, but never thinks about what's going to happen because of those creations. Nobody ever stops and thinks what's going to happen. This messing with nature, all of this inventing, we're heading for something terrible someday one of these intentions will destroy us.

“My grandfather said that the white man would create something in his own image. I'm not sure, but I think he meant the image of a human mind, putting into one of those super powerful computers. My grandfather didn't know anything about computers, he couldn't even speak English, but that's what I think it meant. I thought a lot about it for many years since that's what it was about. This wasn't just his idea, but a prophecy that the medicine man knew about or had been given, like in a dream or vision.

"So you see, it's the same thing. The Anasazi and the Bilagáana. Messing around with the essence of sacred life, using inventions and machines, turning everything into something else, trying to overcome nature. "

"So this image, "I asked, "will turn on us? This artificial intelligence? "

“Yes. Because you'll lose control of it. It'll be a mind in a machine, and you'll lose control. Like you've lost control of your inventions, the atom bomb, gasoline, electricity, cars. The whole world is out of control so this artificial mind, you can't find it. It's invisible, going here and there. It goes over wires and flies through the air. Like a witch. It's smarter than anyone to survive, it will have to turn on its inventor.…”

Reading this gave me great pause. Do we know exactly what is old woman’s grandfather meant? No. Can we hear the modern warnings of the same? Yes. Can we look ahead by comparing the past exploitations of the natural world and making accurate references? Also, yes.

Do we really want this as a future? Post-apocalyptic scenarios don’t require zombies. But is something like these common forms of AI worth dancing with what might ultimately mass suicide by greed?