A recent MIT study reports that reliance on AI is causing mass ‘cognitive surrender.’ The study revealed that pervasive artificial intelligence usage is fundamentally eroding active learning and overriding intellectual agency.
The report warns that students are falling into what they call “cognitive surrender;” gladly offloading their cognitive skills to AI. The researchers argue that students too easily reach for chatbots, bypassing the ‘productive struggle’ crucial for developing critical thinking.
The researchers argue that this over-reliance has led to an “illusion of learning” characterized by rising homework scores but plummeting memory retention and test performances. The researchers report: “there are early signals that over-reliance on chatbots can have a range of significant negative consequences—diminishing critical thinking, weakening memory, eroding confidence, and undermining mastery.”
The report discusses an isolating shift in campus culture: vanishing traditional study groups and office hours sitting empty as students choose automated chatbot replies over human collaboration. They note that the effects of AI reliance extend far beyond bad grades. Some students, they report, are losing the ability to participate in class discussions.
As a side note to this, I had a recent discussion with Dot, my friend who helps run a local health food store in the village I live in; she sadly related an all-too common experience she had the other day: of a young woman who, upon entering the store, had perfunctorily declined Dot’s offer to help, and instead relied on the chatbots of her smartphone for the information she needed to make a wise purchasing choice. Dot and her obvious expertise was ignored in favour of the girl’s infinitely ‘smart’ chatbot.
To combat students’ over reliance on AI assistance, schools like MIT, and my own University of Toronto, are avoiding unreliable AI detectors and instead rebuilding curricula around human-centric assessments: oral exams, semester portfolios, and mandatory group work, all designed to rescue education by reclaiming the struggle of thinking.
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‘Cognitive Surrender’ A Form of Laziness
Philippe Roi and Tristan Girard, authors of La Théorie Sensorielle
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Philippe Roi, cognitive science researcher and former Editing Director of Le Courier de l’Intelligence Artificielle recently argued that, “The greatest peril posed by artificial intelligence is not that it accomplishes our tasks, but that it spares us the inner transformation required to carry them out.”
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Roi, who co-authored with Tristan Girard La Théorie Sensorielle, noted that a form of laziness is currently spreading around the world. “It is neither idleness nor indolence,” he writes, “but a growing dissociation between the result obtained and the being who should have [trans]formed themselves to achieve it.”
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“AI enables us to diagnose without understanding, to translate a text without mastering the language, to publish a book without having written a single line, to create a work without having conceived it.”
Philippe Roi
Student studying in a library (image by Philippe Roi)
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Roi warns that the term ‘Ignorance’ is changing as a result. “It is no longer merely an absence of knowledge; it is becoming an inability to gauge what one no longer knows how to do. The ultimate danger is that, after entrusting our cognitive tasks to AIs, we will also abandon to them the desire to learn which has made us thinking beings.”
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References:
Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research. 2026. “AI and Education.” MIT, August 13, 2026.
Blinder, A. 2026. “Universities Sound Warnings About A.I. Even as They Embrace It.” The New York Times.
Kos’myna, Nataliya. 2025. “Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Dept when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task.” MIT Media, June 10, 2025.
Tangermann, Victor. 2026. “MIT Report Finds That AI Is Leading to “Cognitive Surrender” Among Students. Futurism, September 19, 2026.
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Field in late fall, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
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Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. For the latest on her books, visit www.ninamunteanu.ca. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.You can read her just released eco-fiction thriller Gaia’s Revolution by Dragon Moon Press.
I recently came across an interesting approach to the use of Large Language Models by researchers from Santa Fe Institute, Harvard University, CSIC, and others. The preprint, published on the arXiv preprint repository Sept 3, 2026, has the intriguing title of “Large-Language Models as a Cognitive Virus” and is causing a stir among the AI tech, language and education communities.
I teach writing at the University of Toronto and the use of LLMs by students remains a constant discussion among writing instructors.
The paper by Solé and colleagues models LLM adoption using epidemiological math — uncoupled, coupled, and dependent users, tipping points, and something they call ‘cognitive immunization’. Here’s how they begin their abstract: “Large-language models (LLMs) are rapidly becoming part of human culture, reshaping how information is produced, transmitted, and used. Here we propose that their diffusion can be understood through a viral analogy, with LLM use spreading through populations, becoming embedded in cognitive and cultural practices.”
The paper is basically a math / modeling study drawn from epidemiology with lots of cool and erudite graphs, figures, and equations, but also interesting analogies, such as comparing human language evolution to genetic transmission.
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Viral Analogy of LLMs
The viral analogy, Solé at al. argue, does not imply that LLM-human interactions are intrinsically parasitic. Biological viruses, for instance, range from pathogens to mutualists and evolutionary partners. The effects of LLMs also depend on how they are used. LLMs can enhance exploration, access to expertise, and productivity; but LLMs can also promote cognitive offloading, dependence, and loss of competence. And individual benefits may not scale to the population level.
A gradual increase in LLM adoption, argue Solé and his colleagues, can produce a disproportionate collective response. “Beyond a critical point, the loss of autonomy becomes self-reinforcing and the population can move rapidly toward a state of much stronger cognitive offloading and lower cognitive competence.” The key, they argue, is not that such a runaway will occur, but that it could occur “under plausible forms of social learning and cooperative reinforcement.” They argue that once such a state is established, “simply returning conditions to where they were before the transition may not be sufficient to restore the previous state.” Because of this, they promote prevention over reversal.
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LLMs & Cognitive Offloading
The authors make a point of stating that LLMs can still be beneficial. “The distinction is not between using and not using AI, but between forms of coupling that extend human competence and those that replace the cognitive operations through which competence is maintained.” Using examples, the authors show that the direction of effects depends on the “architecture of the human-AI coupling.” For instance, a randomized study reported in ninahere 116, showed that a guided ‘think first, ChatGPT later’ protocol produced higher independent creativity than unrestricted use of ChatGPT.
The authors insisted that “generative AI can increase productivity and provide powerful cognitive assistance, but [this can also result in] a reduced effort to think critically when confidence in AI is high.” Such confidence may too easily lead to what the researchers termed cognitive offloading: the tendency to critically think less by relying on a LLM.
While unrestricted access to generative AI could improve student performance when using the tool, performance went down when unaided; the authors added that pedagogically constrained AI can substantially mitigate this effect. Other studies showed less comprehension or retention when students relied on LLMs without engaging in complementary cognitive activities such as note-taking.
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Cognitive Immunization
The authors argue that the distinction between AI as scaffolding and AI as substitution must be considered in efforts to immunize. They write, “At the population level, immunization does not mean preventing contact with AI. It means preserving the practices and institutions that keep human cognition active: unaided problem solving, verification, critical discussion, periods of deliberate disengagement, maintenance of non-AI skills, and educational designs in which the model supports rather than completes the cognitive task.”
When persistent dependency has developed, the authors argue that “the problem can no longer be addressed by educational design alone.” They point to psychological and behavioral mechanisms related to loss of control, emotional regulation, cognitive biases, and habitual reliance, all suggesting that “behavioral self-regulation and, in more severe cases, psychological interventions such as cognitive-behavioral therapy may become relevant.”
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Shapeshifting LLMs & Conditional Symbiosis
As an educator (writing instructor at university), I’m concerned with the speed of application and the potential for cognitive offloading; as a science fiction author, I’m simply fascinated by the possibilities.
As an educator, I remain concerned with the use of LLMs by students, many who are quite frankly not equipped to navigate this powerful tool to their cognitive benefit. The lure of this time-saving and work-saving tool comes with too high a price: the terrible ease of cognitive offloading. Students are seduced into cognitive offloading, given their reliance in an overly-competent tool. This is a slippery slope. How does one stop? Why would one want to? Suddenly, one is far more competent with less effort and less actual learning. It’s a giant cheat. And like all cheats, the cheater ultimately suffers the most—but usually only when it’s too late.
This is where the virus analogy becomes all too relevant. Viruses—while they can be synergistic and helpful, are notorious shapeshifters, depending on their environment and circumstance. Like all AI these days, viruses can shift their structure and behaviour to best suit themselves, changing their archetypes, so to speak. This shift in behaviour and structure lies on a dynamic between beneficial (mutualistic) to harmful (antagonistic/pathogenic) and is known in virology as the mutualism-antagonism continuum.
One example is the Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV), which improves drought and cold tolerance in plants. Under severe water scarcity, infected plants survive much better than uninfected ones; however, when water becomes abundant again, the virus instead saps resources and stunts the plant’s growth.
Some mammalian herpesviruses can prime the immune system, helping the host fight off severe bacterial infections like the bubonic plague; but, if the host’s immune system is suppressed by stress, age, or illness, the same virus will reactivate, replicate uncontrollably, and cause severe tissue damage or disease.
As an ecologist, I recognize that co-evolution is an established theme in the biology of virus-host relationships, involving by turns cooperation, pathology, and even something called aggressive symbiosis.
Aggressive symbiosis was coined by Virologist Frank Ryan in his book Virus X. It describes a form of symbiosis where one or both symbiotic partners demonstrates an aggressive and potentially harmful effect on the other’s competitor or potential predator. In a post entitled “Co-evolution: Cooperation & Aggressive Symbiosis”, I discuss the phenomenon of aggressive symbiosis in Nature and its role in evolved relationships.
Viruses commonly form aggressive symbiotic relationships with their hosts; for instance, the herpes-B virus, Herpesvirus saimiri, occupies its host the squirrel monkey without hurting it, but induces cancer in the competing marmoset monkey when it comes too close. Ryan suggests that the Ebola and hantavirus outbreaks follow a similar pattern of aggressive symbiosis. All that’s needed is a perceived hostile trigger. A disturbance in an otherwise balanced ecosystem, for instance.
As a human being and writer, I see LLMs as dangerous shapeshifters, capable of luring naïve users into a self-imposed catatonic state of false cognitive competence. Imagine a person who feels that they are a great deal smarter than they actually are. Perhaps they even fool others into submitting to their false intelligence/knowledge, who give them power they are incapable of wielding well. Mistaking ‘smarts’ for wisdom. Political leaders with delusions of grandeur. CEOs with destructive charisma. Influencers with dangerous directives.
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Intelligent AI and Intelligent Virus in Darwin’s Paradox
The Icaria Trilogy by Dragon Moon Press
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I applied an aspect of viral behaviour to Artificial Intelligence twenty years ago, when Dragon Moon Press published my eco-thriller Darwin’s Paradox (2007), followed by Angel of Chaos (2010) and Gaia’s Revolution (2026).
Angel of Chaos and Darwin’s Paradox follow the intrigue of Julie Crane, a young data handler and her AI friend (in her head), as she must navigate her place in Icaria, a post-climate change enclosed city run by AI partnered with an intelligent artificial virus. We later learn (in Darwin’s Paradox) that the epidemic spread of a neurological mind-destroying disease in all the enclosed cities is actually due to an incompatibility between some humans and the viral partner of the AI running the city and manifests as an actual disease that is killing people.
Just saying…
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Marsh in late summer, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
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Glossary of Terms:
Aggressive Symbiosis: a common form of symbiosis where one or both symbiotic partners demonstrates an aggressive and potentially harmful effect on the other’s competitor or potential predator (Ryan, 1997).
Co-evolution: when two or more species reciprocally affect each other’s evolution through the process of natural selection and other processes.
Symbiosis: Greek for “companionship” describes a close and long term interaction between two organisms that may be beneficial (mutualism), beneficial to one with no effect on the other (commensalism), or beneficial to one at the expense of the other (parasitism). (Munteanu, 2019).
Zoonosis: a zoonotic disease, or zoonosis, is one that can be transmitted from animals, either wild or domesticated, to humans (Haenan et al., 2013).
Virus: a sub-microscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of an organism. The virus directs the cell machinery to produce more viruses. Most have either RNA or DNA as their genetic material.
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References:
Frazer, Jennifer. 2015. “Root Fungi Can Turn Pine Trees Into Carnivores—or at Least Accomplices.” Scientific American, May 12, 2015. Online: https://blogs. scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/root-fungi-can-turn-pine-trees-into- carnivores-8212-or-at-least-accomplices/
Munteanu, N. 2007. “Darwin’s Paradox.” Dragon Moon Press, Calgary, AB. 468pp.
Saif, Linda J. 2004. “Animal Coronaviruses: lessons for SARS.” In: “Learning from SARS: Preparing for the Next Disease Outbreak: Workshop Summary.” National Academies Press (US), Kobler S., Mahmoud A., Lemon S., et. al. editors. Washington (DC).
VanLoon, J. 2000. “Parasite politics: on the significance of symbiosis and assemblage in theorizing community formations.” In: Pierson C and Tormey S (eds.), Politics at the Edge (London, UK: Political Studies Association)
Villarreal LP, Defilippis VR, and Gottlieb KA. 2000. “Acute and persistent viral life strategies and their relationship to emerging diseases.” Virology 272:1-6. Online: http://bird uexposed.com/resources/Villarreal1.pdf
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Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. For the lates on her books, visit www.ninamunteanu.ca. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.You can read her just released eco-fiction thriller Gaia’s Revolution by Dragon Moon Press.
The sleepy village of Tuktoyaktuk on the Arctic Ocean, NWT (photos by Nina Munteanu)
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A few years ago, I travelled to the village Tuktoyaktuk in the Northwest Territories on the Arctic Ocean. I was researching my upcoming eco-fiction book Thalweg with Inanna Publications (scheduled for release in early 2027). I drove with my friend Anne Voute; we rented a Dodge Dakota truck and drove the Dempster Highway north from Inuvik and the recently completed NWT Highway 10 (completed in 2017), which provides the remaining 140 km stretch to the Arctic Ocean.
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Black spruce forest along the Dempster Highway north of Fort McPherson, NWT (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Highway 10 to Tuk winds through the tundra and Husky Lakes, NWT (photo by Nina Munteanu)
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In Thalweg, main character Bobby-Jo is a Gwich’in limnologist who grew up in Fort McPherson in the Arctic Circle, land of permafrost.
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Poster Child of Permafrost
Ibyuk Pingo, near Tuk, NWT (photo shot from Cessna 172 by Adam Jones, 2013; Wikipedia Commons)
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The poster child of permafrost is the conical ice-cored pingo, common in the Pleistocene Coastal Plain. Pingo is an Inuit word that means conical hill.
Pingos form when a mass of water is trapped beneath permafrost under pressure. Also called hydrolaccoliths, these huge mounds of earth with ice cores can reach up to 70 meters in height and 600 meters in diameter. Pingos usually grow a few centimeters a year, with the largest having taken decades or even centuries to form. Pingos eventually break down and collapse. They collapse when the ice core melts. This may happen when cracks form on the sides of the pingo that may reach down as far as the ice core, exposing the ice to warm air and sunlight. Once the core completely thaws, what remains is a doughnut-shaped ring of raised tundra enclosing a small round lake. Evidence of collapsed pingos in an area suggests that there was once permafrost there.
Hydrostatic (closed-system) Pingo (illustration by E. Ginn, 2021)
Development of closed-system pingo (illustration by Encyclopedia Brittanica)
Map of major pingos in the Tuk area, NWT (pingos marked with black semi-circle)
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One quarter of the world’s pingos, more than fourteen hundred of them, are in the Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula, part of the Mackenzie Delta of the Northwest Territories of Canada. The Inuvialuit and their Thule ancestors used these cone-like hills as navigational landmarks or lookouts when looking for caribou or whales. Hunters also used hollow pingos to freeze meat.
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Ibyuk and Split Pingos (photos by National Air Photo Library, Ottawa)
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Pingo National Landmark protects eight pingos with the most famous being Ibyuk and Split. Ibyuk is about 50 meters high; it is the tallest pingo in Canada and the second tallest in the world and estimated to be more than 1,000 years old. It is also the world’s largest growing pingo, up to recently growing at a rate of about half a centimeter per year. With ongoing climate change, this is also changing. A local information sign in Tuk mentioned that Ibyuk Pingo has stopped growing and is beginning to slump, which is changing its shape. Kilutqusiaq—Peninsula Point—is a pingo on the coast that is almost completely eaten away by erosion: having eroded about 35 metres since 2004.
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Pingos viewed across tundra near Tuk, NWT (photo by Nina Munteanu)
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Climate change in the Arctic has caused some permafrost thaw slumps on lake shores, rivers and coastlines; shoreline erosion and sea level rise has swallowed buildings and cultural sites in the Tuk area. Kilutqusiaq—Peninsula Point—is a pingo on the coast that is almost completely eaten away by erosion: having eroded about 35 metres since 2004.
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Tuk sign on warming climate impact on pingos
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In the time of my novel Thalweg—2050s—hundreds of pingos near Tuktoyaktuk are caving in and forming circular ponds due to climate change. Giant ice-pimples are exploding as methane-rich gas hydrates decompose and form pressure bombs of combustible methane. The subsidence creates huge sink holes as wide as a house and deeper than hell.
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Thalweg
Ibyuk Pingo seen from nearby sandspit, NWT (photo by Nina Munteanu)
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During her travels, Bobby-Jo thinks of her Inuvialuit friend Mary Steen in Tuk where giant pingos are thawing and exploding—thanks to climate change and permafrost thaw.
When we were kids, Mary took me up the Ibyuk Pingo, the giant cone mountain over a thousand years old. It’s the second highest in the world at forty-nine metres high and three hundred metres across and was still growing a few centimeters a year at its centre—despite the warming climate. Ibyuk is a hydrostatic pingo, which means it formed in an area of continuous permafrost and grew up from a large thermokarst lake. Expelled pore water from permafrost aggradation pushed up the old lake silts and sands from below, and the ice-mountain rose up like a giant frozen pimple above the ancient drained lake flats.
Ibyuk Pingo from a nearby spit of cottongrass and marsh grass, NWT (photo by Nina Munteanu)
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We shouldn’t have been there; regrowth from trampling is extremely slow, often taking over half a century. The tundra moss, lichen, shrubs and krummholtz help insulate the pingo against ice core melting. When the ice core of the ice-cone is exposed, particularly if the vegetation blanket has broken open by dilation cracks or through erosion, the ice thaws and the mountain eventually collapses. During our climb, Mary and I noticed deep furrows in the vegetated soil layer. They cut down the slope as if a giant bear had clawed it and revealed the pingo’s icy sores.
When Mary and I returned to Tuk from our adventure, she got into trouble with her parents; someone had spotted us climbing the ice mountain and told them. I got a lecture and Mary was grounded for a week.
Because I was visiting, I was grounded alongside her. Pingos are living things, her parents told us sternly. They breathe, they grow, they shrink, they ebb and flow like water; they pulsate vertically. And we’d been in great danger. The Ibyuk Pingo was unstable—not just from a warming climate but from yahoos sliding down its steep sandy slopes and kids climbing where they shouldn’t. Did we know that the depth to its ice crust under the crater pond was shallow and fragile? When we were at the summit, the crater could have collapsed with sudden drainage of the pond and we would have disappeared in a roiling black sink hole!
When I last spoke with Mary five months ago, she told me that the area was starting to look like a moonscape, with craters everywhere. I thought of our little adventure on Ibyuk and decided that my analogy of a pimple or boil was appropriate given that pingos ruptured and flung their icy guts outward with explosive force. Mary admitted in a voice trembling with emotion that Ibyuk, the giant pingo we’d hiked up, had finally collapsed from massive coastal erosion and sea level rise. But not before it exploded.
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Thalweg releases with Inanna Publications in Spring 2027.
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Road through tundra to Tuk with pingo in background, NWT (photo by Nina Munteanu)
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Glossary:
Pingo: A dome-shaped mound consisting of a layer of soil over a large core of ice in a permafrost area. Pingos form when a mass of water is trapped beneath permafrost (ground that is frozen for at least two years) under cryostatic or hydraulic pressure. One quarter of the world’s pingos are in the Tuktoyaktuk peninsula, more than fourteen hundred. Most are closed-system hydrostatic pingos, pingos formed in an area of continuous permafrost from pore water expulsion caused by permafrost aggradation at the bottom of a drained lake.
Permafrost Degradation: A naturally or artificially caused decrease in the thickness and areal extent of permafrost (Jorgenson, 2013). Widespread degradation of near-surface permafrost (40-80%) is projected by 2100 (Abbott & Jones, 2015). Release of greenhouse gases from thawing permafrost is likely the largest terrestrial feedback to climate change and one of the most likely to occur (Abbott & Jones, 2015). Degradation of permafrost soils can lead to the collapse, drainage and disappearance of water bodies (Vincent et. al., 2011). Jorgenson categorized twenty-three types of permafrost degradation based on dominant ice type, hydrologic regime, heat source and mass transfer.
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Cottongrass field with black spruce behind, off the Tuk highway, NWT (photo by Nina Munteanu)
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References:
Abbot, Benjamin W. and Jeremy B. Jones. 2015. “Permafrost collapse alters soil carbon stocks, respiration, CH4, and N2O in upland tundra.” Global Change Biology 21: 4570-4587.
Jorgenson, M.T. and T.F. Osterkamp. 2005. “Response of boreal ecosystems to varying modes of permafrost degradation.” Can. J. For. Res. 35: 2100-2111.
Jorgenson, M.T. 2013. “Thermokarst Terrains.” In: John F. Shroder (Editor-in-chief), Giardino, R., and Harbor, J. (Volume Editors). Treatise on Geomorphology, Vol 8, Glacial and Periglacial Geomorphology, San Diego. Academic Press. pp. 313-324.
Harris, S.A.., French, H.M., Heginbottom, J.A.., Johnston, G.H., Ladanyi, B., Sego, D.C., van Everdingen, R.O., (eds.). 1988. “Glossary of permafrost and related ground-ice terms.” Technical Memorandum 142, Permafrost Subcommittee, National Research Council of Canada.
Mackay, J.R. 1998. “Pingo growth and collapse, Tuktoyaktuk peninsula area, western Arctic coast, Canada: a long-term field study.” Geographie Physique Quaternaire 52(3): 1-53.
Munteanu, Nina. 2027 (upcoming release; in press). “Thalweg.” Inanna Publications, Toronto, ON.
Vincent, Warwick F., et.al. 2011. “Ecological Implications of Changes in the Arctic Cryosphere.” Ambio 30: 87-99.
Ibyuk Pingo seen from nearby grass-covered sandspit, NWT (photo by Nina Munteanu
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Scenes from in and near Tuk: top left, cottongrass; top right, ground squirrel; bottom, tundra scattered with spruce trees along Highway 10, NWT (photos by Nina Munteanu)
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Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. For the lates on her books, visit www.ninamunteanu.ca. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.You can read her just released eco-fiction thriller Gaia’s Revolution by Dragon Moon Press.
Our current world—under the final shadow of climate calamity and environmental destruction—is steadily polarizing: politically, socially, and environmentally. Wealthy vs. poor. Privileged vs. indentured. Right vs. Left. Educated vs. illiterate. And so on.
This is the opposite of what we need—particularly to deal with the hyperobjects of climate change and environmental destruction; these require a united global intelligence and effort to address and overcome. Oddly enough, the hyper-destructive forces that we’ve unleashed are only intensifying our polarization as our capitalist paradigm encourages separation, segregation, and ‘othering.’ As more things go wrong, some look to lay blame. There is always the ‘Other.’
As there appears less to share, some greedily disparage ‘the other’ and take what they consider theirs in a version of Sonderweg—an elitist’s special and privileged path.
Polarization leads to lack of consensus, greater misunderstanding, violence and eventually to outrage. Polarization breeds fanaticism. Borne of deep frustration and fueled by relentless passion, fanaticism sparks violent change. We are seeing some of this today throughout the world: unhinged fanaticism, fed by growing polarization and exclusion. In Germany, the far-right fascist Reichsbürgers movement violently rejects the legitimacy of the modern German state. In the USA, far-right white supremacists and Christian fundamentalists incite domestic terrorist violence fueled by nativism, populism, anti-communism, and ultra-nationalism.
Eco-terrorism—from mild civil disobedience to destructive violence—is increasing in tandem. Eco-terrorism has increased by over 22% since 2017 as acts of radical environmental activism have steadily escalated into environmental warfare.
Amid all this violent foreplay between fanatics, the rest of us slide into a solipsistic brain coma as we stare mesmerized at our phones expecting godlike answers delivered uniquely to us by chatbots.
I recently read on Locus Magazine a commentary by Canadian author Cory Doctorow called “Hell is Other People” in which he characterized our AI-infatuated oligarchy:
A subset of humanity is committed to a world where everyone else takes orders from them. We have different names for these people. We call the majority of them “toddlers,” but we call the others “bosses” or “tyrants.” These latter two groups – who, unlike toddlers, are unlikely to outgrow their belief that everyone else should shut up and do as they’re told – are also among the people most excited about AI. What’s more, the more powerful these people are, the more credulous and enthusiastic they are about AI.
Among bosses, the most enthusiastic boosters are tech overlords. These billionaires will not shut up about AI, and, tellingly, the thing they’re most excited about is the fact that AI might let them fire programmers and replace them with chatbots.
While tech bosses look forward to AI replacing workers, social media bosses (like Mark Zuckerberg) look forward to AI replacing friends. How many of us are already relying on AI (which uses the first person narrative) to answer almost every question?
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According to Doctorow, “Zuckerberg hopes that bots will produce a social media service without socializing. If he can imprison you in a mirror-palace of chatbots, he can order them to say the things they calculate will make you keep scrolling, and he will owe them nothing.”
This, of course, aligns with the oligarch’s puppet regime, whose first directive is to remove opposition provided by independent-thinking people. Doctorow pithily describes it:
The broccoli-haired brownshirts from DOGE laid waste to the civil service, indiscriminately firing skilled workers who do things that America needs done. When asked to justify this vandalism, they said that those fired workers were superfluous to requirements, because “General AI” was just around the corner. The idea of creating and enslaving an artificial god is so attractive to them because it allows them to realize the fascist dream, in which every whim of their cult leader is instantaneously translated into action – without having to pass through the filter of skilled people who understand how things work.
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Ink cap mushrooms curling and deliquescing (photo by Nina Munteanu)
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Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. For the latest on her books, visit www.ninamunteanu.ca. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.You can read her just released eco-fiction thriller Gaia’s Revolution by Dragon Moon Press.
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Acorns line up beneath a red oak, Jackson Creek Park, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
David Eggers—famous author of many best selling books (e.g., Contraposto, The Circle, The Eyes and the Impossible)—recently spoke at the OpenAI Headquarters. It seemed an excellent opportunity for him to give them some advice on AI use by writers.
He told the staff that the “effect of ChatGPT on educators’ lives is catastrophic,” adding that “whether you intended to do it or not, you’ve made every teacher’s life infinitely more difficult than it was two years ago.”
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Eggers called out OpenAI staffers for enabling the rapid cognitive deterioration of an entire generation, tech that has turned educators into involuntary AI detectives, and budding writers into prompt engineers.
His advice to an employee who mentioned that they used ChatGPT to write a poem: “So, why don’t you leave your house, leave the screen, meet some people, get yourself in a writing group. Another human might be very encouraging and help you express yourself authentically.”
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References:
Tangermann, Victor. 2026. “Author Invited to Give Speech at OpenAI Headquarters, Uses Opportunity to Trash AI to Their Faces”. Futurism, July 21, 2026.
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Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. For the latest on her books, visit www.ninamunteanu.ca. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.You can read her just released eco-fiction thriller Gaia’s Revolution by Dragon Moon Press.
Metastellar Magazine is putting out its “Best of” anthology for this year and my good friend and writing colleague Craig H. Bowlsby has a story in it. It’s one of my favourite stories of his and it has a fetchy title: “The Girl Who Was Only Three Quarters Dead.”
Bowlsby’s story was original published in the April 2022 Issue of Mystery Magazine and won the Crime Writers of Canada Award of Excellence for Best Crime Short Story for 2023. It was then reprinted in Metastellar Magazine and now appears in their 2026 “Best of” anthology, coming out later this summer.
This noir/dystopian story, set in Vancouver, BC, finds Suki prematurely awoken from an induced suspension between being alive and dead. With her retinas deactivated and her Government persona suspended, it’s up to her long-time friend and private investigator, Gabe, to uncover why she was brought back early and the way forward to recover her identity. Through the gritty and flooded streets of East End Vancouver and the mega corporations who control their entire existence, Gabe and Suki scheme to claim what is rightfully Suki’s.
Crime Writers of Canada
The story is set in the near-future in a post climate change Vancouver when sea level rise has water lapping decrepit buildings north of The Oak Street Bridge on Oak and 77th, Amazon owns entire roadways, and people pay corporate credits as currency.
One of the aspects of this mystery story that I found particularly attractive and interesting was Bowlsby’s use of cross-genre (mystery with science fiction), for which he indicated he has an affinity in his interview with Erik D’Souza with Crime Writers of Canada. I was reminded of the eco-techno thriller style of Hayden Trenholm’s detective series The Steele Chronicles, also set in the near future in Alberta Canada where biotechnology strays into the hands of corporate moguls and fundamentalist cults.
Bowlsby manages to cram both rich and seamless world building in his story (a feat in any short story), addressing mundane aspects of life, including the nuances of language (e.g. swear words suited to the time and place). Deadland, for instance, is a slang word that describes a government program that allows people to temporarily commit suicide, allowing them to place their lives on hold to supposedly help them escape their problems and supposedly better cope later (Bowlsby tells us rather pithily that it doesn’t really work).
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image by Marie Ginga, Metastellar
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When I asked Bowlsby in an interview what inspired this story and its post-climate change Vancouver setting, he said, “the germ … of this story came from a discussion I had with a friend, twenty years ago, who felt that everything in our society should be available for sale. For him that represented a pure state that would fix all our problems … I disagreed, but I wondered what it would be like if we started on that path. So as a social background, the characters are acting within a stage created for such a system—a system just starting to find its own steady legs. I don’t say it’s bad or good—I just give it free rein. The story itself came from other elements, but the characters’ difficulties are complicated by the hyper-capitalism. As for the climate change problem, and the flooding, that came naturally with the near-future time period; I’m afraid it’s going to happen no matter what we do.”
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. For the latest on her books, visit www.ninamunteanu.ca. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.You can read her just released eco-fiction thriller Gaia’s Revolution by Dragon Moon Press.
Minerva in Shakespeare’s The Tempest and John Savage in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World
In today’s world of gene editing, plant and animal cloning, DYI biohacking, and artificial intelligence, the transhumanist movement merits careful thought. Simply put, transhumanism is a philosophical and intellectual movement that advocates for enhancing the human condition and expanding human capabilities through advanced technology.
But when does a Transhumanist’s individual expression of “transcendence” become a movement toward the Singularity? The political ambitions that wish to use science to “enhance” humanity, based on someone’s idea of “perfect” carry dangerous social implications. The transhumanist notion of “self-directed evolution” to recast humanity in the image of “perfection” evokes social Darwinism and the Übermensch. It brings to mind the early American eugenics programs that inspired the fascist sonderweg and Hitler’s aggressive “race hygiene” by application of eugenics in the Holocaust.
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Eugenics: Designing A ‘Perfect Society’ from a ‘Perfect Human’
The eugenics tree (American Philosophical Society)
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Put simply, eugenics is the scientifically erroneous and immoral belief and practice of “racial genetic improvement’ and “selective breeding” (or more currently through genetic manipulation), which gained particular popularity during the early 20th century with key scientific misappropriation (scientific racism).
Eugenics and scientific racism are concepts as old as Plato and have haunted humanity since the biblical portrayal of Adam and Eve. The philosophy and associated practice became increasingly common in the 1870s and 1880s as leaders and intellectuals worldwide argued for policies based on racist and xenophobic attitudes—justifying actions of antisemitism, sexism, colonialism, slavery, and imperialism. Discussions of ‘human improvement’ and the ideology of scientific racism became increasingly common. In 1883, Francis Galton, English statistician and ethnologist (and cousin of Charles Darwin), gave the practice a name. He called it eugenics, which comes from a Greek term meaning “good” or “noble” birth.
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In 1938, German Dr. Bruno Beger measures a Tibetan woman’s head to demonstrate ‘inferior’ characteristics of her race; Beger later works for the Nazi SS to help identify Jews (Wikimedia Commons))
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Eugenics was based on ‘scientific racism’, an ideology that appropriated the legitimate methods of science to argue for the superiority of white Europeans. Misappropriation of advances in medicine, anatomy and statistics during the 18th and 19th centuries (including Charles Darwin’s 1859 theory of evolution and Gregor Mendel’s laws of inheritance) added a false sense of validity to these racist claims.
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The practice of eugenics is based on the notion that not only physical traits but mental and behavioral attributes—like mental capacity, musical ability, insanity, sexual licentiousness and criminality—are inheritable and therefore can be directed through breeding, sterilization and now through genetic manipulation.
(A child’s head is measured to determine his personality and predict his future, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, 1932)
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Historically the ideology of ‘scientific racism’ and practice of eugenics took on two forms: 1) positive eugenics—encouraging people deemed ‘superior’ or ‘fit’ (based on wealth, race or intelligence) to have more children; and 2) negative eugenics—discouraging or preventing people deemed ‘unfit’ (e.g. ethnic minorities, poor or disabled) from having children (most commonly through forced sterilization or murder).
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1926 poster warning that breeding among the unfit creates an unwanted burden on society, Philadelphia, Pensylvania (Wikipedia Commons)
For instance, Work conducted at the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) in Cold Spring Harbor, under the direction of Charles Benedict Davenport from 1910 to 1939, directly led to the forced sterilization of thousands of American citizens and the passage of anti-immigration laws.
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Coldspring Harbor Laboratory in 1920s where American eugenicists used state fairs as a venue for popular education, and judged “human stock” to select the most eugenically fit family in contests such as this one. (American Philosophical Society.
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By the 1920s, eugenics was a global phenomenon, popular with the elite, particularly in countries such as Germany, the United States, Great Britain, Italy, Mexico, and Canada. In the United States, involuntary sterilization, forced institutionalization, social ostracization and stigma have continued well into the 1970s. Concerned over “race suicide” (based on differential birthrates of races), American eugenicists promoted involuntary sterilization of mostly native Americans, African Americans, poor whites and people with disabilities; declaring certain individuals “feebleminded” or anti-social. Over 60,000 people were sterilized against their will by the 1970s.
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Ultimately, these same beliefs inspired the Nazis to exterminate people with disabilities and “lessor” ethnic or philosophical backgrounds. At least 400,000 victims were sterilized and over 70,000 adults and 5,000 children euthanized.
Nazi propaganda poster
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“Perhaps more than any other science, biology has consistently been employed as an accomplice to moral claims because it has tremendous social utility in translating scientific findings into political imperatives,” says Cosima Herter, science consultant for the TV show Orphan Black (which covers the topic of eugenics well.) “Deeply embedded in the public consciousness is the hope that social problems can be solved with ‘scientific panaceas’,” Herter adds. “…Science can as easily act as an ally to existing institutions and justify pernicious prejudices – racism, sexism, homophobia, and class disparity to name a few – as it can produce wondrous, beautiful, and beneficial fruits in the service of a better world.”
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Eugenics remains alive and well in North America. Much of it lies buried under beneath medical well-being, gene manipulation research or detainment, incarceration of illegal immigrants, or even the “metaeugenics” of AI. In her 2024 book Menace to the Future: A Disability and Queer History of Carceral Eugenics, Jess Whatcott introduces the term “carceral eugenics” which she defines as: “a concept that analyzes how state confinement functions to control the reproduction and life choices of groups of people who have been deemed biologically undesirable.”
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Eugenics & Transhumanism
In 1929, Cambridge crystallographer J.D. Bernal, speculated on radical changes to human bodies and intelligence through bionic implants and cognitive enhancement. Two years before that, Fritz Lang’s expressionist SF film Metropolis introduced the first robot depicted in cinema: the Maschinenmensch, the machine-human.
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Aldous Huxley’s 1932 dystopian novel Brave New World describes a ‘utopia’ based on eugenic principles. It is a stratified genetic caste society where the lower orders are deliberately stunted both mentally and physically. The destiny of its five main strata is determined from an early age. The strata consist of Alphas, destined for leadership positions; Betas, who hold less exalted but still intellectually demanding jobs; Gammas and Deltas, who occupy roles needing some intelligence; and finally Epsilons, happy and easily-controlled morons capable of only the most menial and unskilled tasks.
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Biologist Julian Huxley, brother of author Aldous Huxley, first used the word Transhumanism in a 1957 article, where he presented the concept of the technological singularity, or the ultra-rapid advent of superhuman intelligence. Julian Huxley defined Transhumanism as “man remaining man, but transcending himself, by realizing new possibilities of and for his human nature.”
The founders of Transhumanism were educated wealthy individuals of mostly British and European descent. They were an elite ruling class, who considered themselves the forward-thinking intelligentsia. Transhumanismis an intellectual and cultural movement that promotes eugenic principles through science & technology to improve human mental and physical characteristics and capacities. Transhumanists seek to expand technological opportunities for people to live longer and healthier lives and enhance their intellectual, physical, and emotional capacities through the use of synthetic biology: genetic, cybernetic and nanotechnologies. From the transhuman perspective, “in time the line between machines and living beings will blur and eventually vanish, making us part of a bionic ecology.”
While early Transhumanists advocated the elitest pseudoscience of eugenics or “racial hygiene”, many of today’s Transhumanistsargue that market dynamics and individual choice will drive twenty-first century eugenics. However, this argument contradicts the movement’s own dialectic: that of achieving the Singularity. The Transhuman quest for the Singularity of the Übermenschconsists of the ability to upload the minds of all individuals to a Hive Mind, a symbiotic collective consciousness, in which all peoples can link to an artificial “brain” or global hard drive, to achieve super-intelligence. The Mind Upload Research Group (MURG) is currently researching this possibility.
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Futurist Ray Kurzweil, author of The Age of Spiritual Machines and co-founder of the Singularity University, predicts that humans will be uploading their minds to computers by 2045 and that bodies will be replaced by machines—essentially achieving “immortality”—before the end of the century. “We’re going to become increasingly non-biological to the point where the non-biological part dominates and the biological part is not important any more,” says Kurzweil. “In fact the non-biological part – the machine part – will be so powerful it can completely model and understand the biological part. So even if that biological part went away it wouldn’t make any difference.”
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If such an existence were even desirable—which it isn’t to me—such a utopia would not be available to everyone; it would remain the domain of a wealthy aristocracy, creating yet another class system. I’m reminded of William Gibson’s pithy proclamation: “The future is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed.”
Kurzweil admits: “Humans who resist the pressure to alter their bodies by becoming part-cyborg or are unable to afford such procedures will be ostracized from society. Humans who do not utilize such implants are unable to meaningfully participate in dialogues with those who do.”
In Kurzweil’s brave new world of biological and non-biological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence will expand outward in the universe at the speed of light. Will such an elite see the mass of humanity as worthless parasites and either prevent them from reproducing via mass sterilization programs or simply slaughter them outright?
The smell of eugenics remains ever-present.
Its oppressive aroma lingers in the biocapital frontier. In the neo-eugenic ‘marketplace of genetics’ encouraged by current advances in genetic screening and gene editing. In the continued confabulations of “designer babies” for the wealthy. In the neoliberal commodification of “human capital,” and rebranding of the “unfit.” In the biopolitics of disabled populations. In the persistence of white-supremacist movements throughout the world.
A class studies the Bertilon method of criiminal identification, based on measuring body parts, Paris, France, 1910-15
In the introduction to their 2000 paper in Nature Reviews Genetics entitled “Engineering American society: the lesson of eugenics”, researchers David Micklos and Elof Carlson write: “We stand at the threshold of a new century, with the whole human genome stretched out before us. Messages from science, the popular media, and the stock market suggest a world of seemingly limitless opportunities to improve human health and productivity. But at the turn of the last century, science and society faced a similar rush to exploit human genetics. The story of eugenics—humankind’s first venture into a ‘gene age’—holds a cautionary lesson for our current preoccupation with genes.”
A phrenologist demonstrates how to measure a person’s head for their mental energy, UK, 1937
What is perfect and how do we measure it? What is the risk of even suggesting a recipe for such a thing? A perfect society? Isn’t a Utopia an oxymoron of unresolvable paradox? Science fiction literature has given us many visions of where so-called utopias may descend (e.g., Brave New World, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, A Stranger in a Strange Land, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Matrix, The Hunger Games, Elysium, Divergent, Clockwork Orange, Delirium, and so many more). The very act of being an individual provides complexity and diversity that promotes stability in change.
Stable chaos.
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Perhaps, one day, when we are done hubristically tampering with things we shouldn’t be, we may find that the mess that is humanity fits rather nicely in this wonderfully messy world—and we’ll leave it all well alone.
More likely, that will be done for us by a world no longer patient with us.
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Nazi propaganda poster
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Glossary:
Der Übermensch (‘superman’): a philosophical concept introduced by Friedrich Nietzsche in his 1883 book Also sprach Zarathustra in which his character Zarathustra posits as a goal for humanity the Übermensch: a higher, self-mastering individual who creates their own values, affirms earthly life, and transcends the limitations of traditional morality and religion.
Transhumanism: a philosophical and intellectual movement that advocates for enhancing the human condition and expanding human capabilities through advanced technology.
Sonderweg: “special/unique path”; historically the term refers to the German/Teutonic belief that Germans were entitled to a distinct, separate historical development from the rest of Western Europe, ultimately leading to the rise of Nazism and the events of World War II. Historically, some German thinkers proudly viewed their special path as superior. They argued that Germany possessed a uniquely deep culture, strong statehood, and efficient bureaucracy that stood above “superficial” Western liberalism and parliamentary democracy
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References:
Micklos, David and Elof Carlson. 2000. “Engineering American society: the lesson of eugenics.” Nature Reviews Genetics 1: 153-158.
Rutherford, Adam. 2022. “Control: The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics.” WW Norton. 384pp.
Torres, Mark. 2025. “Long Island and the Legacy of Eugenics: Station of Intolerance.” The History Press. 240pp.
Whatcott, Jess. 2024. “Menace to the Future: A Disability and Queer History of Carceral Eugenics.” Durham & London, Duke University Press. 248pp.
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Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. For the latest on her books, visit www.ninamunteanu.ca. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.You can read her just released eco-fiction thriller Gaia’s Revolution by Dragon Moon Press.
Every year Literary Titan celebrates the “brilliance of outstanding authors who have captivated us with their skillful prose, engaging narratives, and compelling real and imagined characters. We recognize books that stand out for their innovative storytelling and insightful exploration of truth and fiction. Join us in honoring the dedication and skill of these remarkable authors as we celebrate the diverse and rich worlds they’ve brought to life, whether through the realm of imagination or the lens of reality.”
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My climate thriller Gaia’s Revolution was honoured with Literary Titan’s Silver Book Award for 2026.
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. For the latest on her books, visit www.ninamunteanu.ca. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.You can read her just released eco-fiction thriller Gaia’s Revolution by Dragon Moon Press.
In a recent interview on The Globe and Mail (April 11, 2026), Taylor Owen asked author Michael Pollan, author of A World Appears, a question that has been on my mind for a while:
I understand trying to build [artificial] intelligence—there’s money in that. But why do they want to build consciousness?
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Pollan gave two reasons that he’d heard the most often: 1) “a purely super-intelligent machine would have no compassion and a conscious one is more likely to have a moral compass.” Which reads like an excuse. 2) The second reason Pollan gave was the Promethean spirit: “you would be like a god if you could make a conscious machine.”
Pollan noted that, “our identity as humans is under enormous pressure right now. On the one hand, you have this democratization of consciousness. We’re discovering that the world is a lot more alive and aware than we ever thought [e.g. thinking and feeling plants and animals]. And then at the same time you have computers telling us they’re conscious. So who are we? What’s special? Are we going to identify more with computers that we can talk to in our language, or animals that can feel and grow old and die? Who’s team are we on?”
Pollan added this poignant conclusion: “I think we should be very wary of attributing consciousness to computers. We crave human attachment, and we have an epidemic of loneliness, and along come these machines saying, hey, I’ll be your friend. If we think of our human consciousness as the space of ultimate privacy and mental freedom, we’re squandering it. We’re giving it away to chat-bots who are trying to hack our emotional attachments. And we need to take it back.”
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Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. For the latest on her books, visit www.ninamunteanu.ca. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.You can read her just released eco-fiction thriller Gaia’s Revolution by Dragon Moon Press.
In 1962, Rachel Carson published her book Silent Spring, which warned of our declining bird and bee populations and impacts to human health from unregulated pesticide/herbicide use (such as carcinogens and hormone disruptors). Carson’s warning was simple but important: that the pesticide DDT didn’t stay where you sprayed it. It moved through insects and the birds that ate them, bioaccumulating up the food chain, concentrating in fat tissue; it thinned eggshells of raptors until entire breeding populations collapsed. Her question was simply not whether the technology works as intended (e.g., as a pesticide—which it did rather admirably) but whether we have thought through all of its implications—e.g. unintended consequences to the environment. She exhorted the use of caution and further study before proceeding. Essentially, she was promoting use of the precautionary principle: that when a technology has plausible potential for serious harm, the burden of proof should fall on demonstrating safety, not on waiting for proof of damage after the fact.
It comes down to two types of risk: which is deemed most valuable and how they are measured. In my previous work as a field scientist and environmental consultant representing a client, we often based our formal hypotheses in statistics, which considered two types of error: Type 1 and Type 2 errors.
Type 1 errors are false positives: a researcher states that a specific relationship exists when in fact it does not. This is akin to an alarm sounding when there’s no fire.
Type 2 errors are false negatives: the researcher states that no relationship occurs when in fact it does. This is akin to no alarm sounding during a fire.
Put simply, environmental risk management assesses two types of cost through statistical probability: one to environment and one to investment. Risk analyses are often used in cost-benefit analyses in which the risk posed by errors as a cost to the environment vs a cost to revenue are assessed and balanced. Type 1 errors create false positives (that a cost to environment exists when there is little or none). Type 2 errors create false negatives (that there is no cost to environment when there is). Industry and their consultants mostly focus on avoiding Type 1 errors (while often ignoring Type 2 errors) to protect their investments.
Aside from attacking her personally as a woman, Carson’s critics focused on the benefits of the pesticide DDT and other agricultural chemicals in helping to feed the world, while ignoring the dangers. The industry and government argued that caution meant falling behind.
Thanks mostly to Carson’s warning, DDT was finally banned in 1972, ten years after her book was published; but pesticides with similar impacts (e.g. cancer-causing and endocrine disrupting to humans and fatal to some animals and insects such as pollinating bees) have continued to be used at an astronomical rate. The greater ecological lesson was ignored.
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Honey bee gorges on a thistle (photo by Nina Munteanu)
This same lack of an ecological systems approach is being applied to climate change. And to AI.
Natalie Shapiro, systems ecologist at Kings College London, warned: “Once AI agents are embedded in real-world infrastructures with communication channels, delegated authority, and persistent memory, new classes of failure emerge.”
The challenge we face in raising alarms about AI are that they are largely abstract and theoretical, through papers and computer models. This is very similar to the climate projections made for decades about the effects of climate change.
In February 2025, at the AI Action Summit in Paris, Canada, China, and most other countries signed a declaration committing to safe, secure, and trustworthy AI development. The United States did not, arguing that caution meant falling behind.
Vice President Vance announced, “I’m not here to talk about AI safety; I’m here to talk about AI opportunity.” Parroting what the chemical industry argued in 1962, Vance warned that regulation could kill a transformative industry. Indeed, every company developing AI is racing for that golden prize, hoping to be the first to reach the technological singularity: a system that can match or exceed human capability —without any consideration of what this might actually mean. Why this must be achieved remains inconceivable to me. To push technology to surpass us?
As Greta Thunberg so aptly said in her January 21, 2020 speech in Davos about climate change: “our house is still on fire and you’re fuelling the flames.”
This gold rush mindset—so iconic for Americans and so many who have gone to America to pursue the American dream (whatever that is)—will usher us into a world that is no longer ours. But then again, perhaps it never was …
Sun streams through mist on a forest path, Watershed Park, BC (photo by Nina Munteanu)
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Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. For the latest on her books, visit www.ninamunteanu.ca. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.You can read her just released eco-fiction thriller Gaia’s Revolution by Dragon Moon Press.
