Bacteria to AI: Human Futures with Our Nonhuman Symbionts

by N. Katherine Hayles

A new theory of mind that includes nonhuman and artificial intelligences.
 
The much-lauded superiority of human intelligence has not prevented us from driving the planet into ecological disaster. For N. Katherine Hayles, the climate crisis demands that we rethink basic assumptions about human and nonhuman intelligences. In Bacteria to AI, Hayles develops a new theory of mind—what she calls an integrated cognitive framework (ICF)—that includes the meaning-making practices of lifeforms from bacteria to plants, animals, humans, and some forms of artificial intelligence. Through a sweeping survey of evolutionary biology, computer science, and contemporary literature, Hayles insists that another way of life, with ICF at its core, is not only possible but necessary to safeguard our planet’s future

293 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 12, 2025

Reviews

[RoaringRatalouille · Rating 3 out of 5]

Can't speak for the entire book, only read some chapters. But it was mainly the first chapter, "An Integrated Cognitive Framework", the struck me as interesting and innovative. Here, Hayles pushes her previous work on nonconscious cognition forward so as to provide a new way to think beyond anthropocentrism. She juxtaposes "origin stories of quantum mechanisms (origin of phenomena) with evolutionary biology (origin of multicellular bodies) and technics (origin of the human)" in order to show their increasing entanglements via such technologies as quantum computers, gene editing, or AI (p. 2). She dubs this approach "micro/evo/techno relationality"; micro drawing from Barad, evo from Haraway, and techno from Bernard Stiegler. To understand cognition today, the book's argument goes, we must attend to the interrelations between different scales: entanglements of life, matter, and technology. Her concept of "technosymbiosis" is further meant to highlight these interactions.

Some of the later chapters were interesting (chapters 2 and 6 were alright), others were quite disappointing. For instance, chapter 7 lends far too much credence to imaginaries of different AI models' "cognitive" abilities. Also, chapter 9 sadly dedicates a little too much time and space to time arguing against Yuval Harari's "Homo Deus" (when most people have stopped taking him seriously as a "historian" at this point).

Nonetheless, still recommend the book for its quite interesting conceptual discussion in the beginning where Hayles articulates a really subtle take on Barad's "diffractive methodology", the issues with Haraway's "sympoesis", and Stiegler's emphasis on regulation as a response to technology.