Translated from the German original. Read the original in German.
Today, once again, I spent a lot of time working with various artificial intelligences.
One sentence came up that I cannot shake off:
“Homo sapiens is not an inevitable outcome of evolution – but a historical accident under very specific conditions.”
When an AI calls you an “accident”, you cannot help but start thinking.
For a historical accident, though, we behave on this planet as if we were the planned pinnacle of evolution.
Perhaps we should ask ourselves more honestly who and what we really are – and what evolutionary contribution we still make today. Right now, hardly any. Quite the opposite: we take more than we give back.
The Earth will remain in a relatively habitable state for at least another 1–2 billion years. A time horizon far beyond our human scale of thinking and planning.
Which is precisely why we too – as a historical accident – should develop a realistic assessment of our role on this planet.
Otherwise the historical accident will be over sooner than we think.
And evolution will merely note: yet another accident without a future…
