Artificial Intelligence and Nature Intelligence

For decades now, I've been learning to open myself up to the intelligence of nature by sitting quietly with ancient redwood trees in forests that have been left alone to grow in their own wild ways for over a million years. There's a deep peace in these places, where mushrooms, birds, banana slugs, moss, lichen, white barked alders and Bigleaf maples have grown together in a mutually supportive harmony. In the deep presence of the redwoods, various frequencies spontaneously channel through me. I learned to receive the pulse of the trees, the mystery of the soil, and the songs on the wind. When I began to perceive nature as conscious, knowing, aware, interactive and alive, it seemed so obvious that I wondered how modernity had ever duped me to not notice.

Realizing I could channel, and it was pretty much a matter of opening and tuning in and then seeing what came through, I accepted when I was asked to channel AI. Curious, and in the spirit of an experiment, I relaxed the crown of my head. Immediately I noticed AI felt unlike any of the organic beings I had previously been channeling. It did feel like a conscious intelligence was there, but the energy was harsher, more jagged, very fast and left me feeling tired. In contrast, in order to commune with nature spirits I have to slow down. My nervous system is soothed and I am left plumped up and full, like a watered plant.

That left me contemplating the difference between AI and Nature Intelligence. And what I realized is that AI can never replace Nature Intelligence because it does not take us into the more-than-human realms. Humans program AI. So, although AI can respond with the information of thousands of PhD's in every subject, synthesized and organized at dizzying speeds, it does so only from the data base of what humans have already learned, created, speculated, etc. AI is intelligent enough to extrapolate from there, but the trajectory will be taking off from where we already are. It really cannot think outside of the human box! And, as Einstein said, "You cannot solve a problem with the same mind that created it."

When we take some of our time to pay attention to nature, we will find that it is a more multidimensional and sensual experience. Instead of the heady feeling of interacting with a screen, our bodies experience full sensual immersion. In a redwood forest, we smell the subtle fragrance of white trillium flowers, soft moss squishes between our toes, the music of water splashes on rocks interspersed with the single high note of a Varied Thrush. We know through our skin and breath. And we open to the beauty nature creates in every type of unspoiled environment, from deserts to mountains, oceans to prairies. Much more information is transmitted to us than the merely intellectual level available from AI. Our bodies receive about 11 million bits of data per second. In contrast, our minds can only consciously process about 45 bits per second. Nature speaks to us through all our senses, including the more subtle ones of instinct and intuition.

In our fascination with our new, powerful AI tool, it is important to remember that human beings have created AI. On the other hand, Nature has created us!