Description
What if the most powerful tool humanity has ever created could either help heal the Earth — or accelerate its unraveling?
In this special Earth Week edition of Frankly, Nate delves into what it truly means for a technology or project to be “in service of Life,” using the rapidly evolving landscape of Artificial Intelligence as an example. Like any other tool that humanity has created, AI has the potential to either mitigate humanity’s impact on our planetary home or deepen the ecological crises we face. Nate speculates on the key metrics that might guide AI and other technologies toward goals that support the abundance and vibrancy of all complex life on Earth.
In an age overflowing with information, could rethinking our relationships and incentive structures offer a clearer path forward? How can we identify goals that are not in service of Life? Finally, how could a shift in social and cultural values play the most critical part in transforming our human system to be aligned with the rest of the biosphere?
(Recorded April 21, 2025)
Show Notes
00:10 – Earth Day
00:44 – Artificial Intelligence
01:29 – Nora Bateson TGS Episode
01:33 – Gregory Bateson
01:35 – Rex Weyler TGS Episode
03:07 – Ecological Overshoot, Financial Overshoot
04:40 – Regenerative Agriculture
05:18 – Rebound Effect, Backfire Effect
07:21 – Fascism
07:22 – Colonizing Mars
07:24 – Buddhism
08:22 – Zero-sum Game
08:33 – Just in Time Delivery
08:42 – Six-Continent Supply Chain
08:44 – Polarization
08:53 – Wet Bulb Temperature
09:55 – Species of Bacteria
10:05 – Three Trillion Trees on Earth
10:09 – Tom Crowther
10:12 – Biocomplexity
10:18 – 73,000 Tree Species
10:20 – 1 Million Known Insect Species
10:30 – 400,000 Species of Beetles
10:34 – 180,000 Species of Butterflies and Moths
10:43 – 33,000 Species of Fish
10:47 – 11,000 Species of Birds
10:57 – Earthwatch
11:03 – 250 Species of Hummingbirds in Ecuador
11:07 – 11,000 Species of Reptiles
11:10 – 8,000 Species of Amphibians
11:16 – 6,400 Species of Mammals
11:26 – 500 Species of Primates
11:32 – 25 Species of Apes
11:35 – 8 Species of Great Apes
11:45 – 9 Hominid Species
11:53 – Mass Extinction
12:01 – All Time High of Biodiversity Complexity
12:55 – TGS Podcasts
12:56 – TGS Franklys
12:58 – Earth Day 2024, Earth Day 2023, Earth Day 2022, Earth Day 2021
13:18 – Anthropocentric
13:40 – Reductionist
13:48 – Symbiosis
14:36 – College Textbooks (The Bottlenecks of the 21st Century, Reality Blind Vol 1, Reality Blind Vol 2)
14:37 – DJ White TGS Episode
15:01 – Mahamudra Meditation
16:14 – Most Climate Models Stop at Year 2099
16:30 – PETM (Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum)
17:24 – James Hansen
17:25 – James Hansen (and Pushker Kharecha’s) Paper
17:31 – At 3 Degrees C Half of Earth Species are Lost
18:09 – Oceans Comprise 70% of Living Habitat on Earth
18:46 – Exoplanetary
18:58 – Immortal Robot Bodies
19:05 – Singularity Philosophy (Singularitarianism)
19:31 – Species Extinction
19:37 – Dire Wolves
19:54 – Extinction Rate
20:13 – Jurassic Park
20:18 – Uploadable Brain (Mind Uploading)
20:30 – Existential Global Threats
20:35 – Nuclear Weapons
20:49 – Malaria
21:11 – Malaria as Ecological Defense, Slashing and Burning
23:11 – Wind Farms, Solar Energy, Eco Homes (Ecohouse), Recycling
23:22 – ESG Initiative (Environmental, Social Governance)
23:23 – United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
23:25 – Greenpeace, The Sierra Club, The Nature Conservancy
24:42 – Elephants Responding to Their Individual Names
25:09 – Deep Time (Peter Brannen: “Deep Time, Mass Extinctions, and Today” TGS Episode)