Why AI Can’t Save Us From Ourselves — If Evolution Is Any Guide

Reflections from Evolutionary theorist E. O. Wilson’s help us understand

The late E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) received more than one hundred awards for his research and writing, including two Pulitzer Prizes. As a professor at Harvard University, Wilson influenced generations with his ideas about human evolution and ethics.

In his 2012 New York Times essay “Evolution and Our Inner Conflict,”Wilson asked two key question regarding the problem of evil in our world:

Are human beings intrinsically good but corruptible by the forces of evil, or the reverse, innately sinful yet redeemable by the forces of good? Are we built to pledge our lives to a group, even to the risk of death, or the opposite, built to place ourselves and our families above all else?

Wilson believed that humans are all of these things at once. In order to evolve, nature pulls humanity between good and evil instincts. Humans sometimes work to preserve the group and sometimes work to preserve the individual. This kind of multilevel selection was “the principal force of social evolution.” Most importantly, he believed that biology, not Godm, was the key to understanding the world. For Wilson, the evolutionary pull between selfish and altruistic behaviors is the essence of our inner conflict.