HMN 2025: How Could humans and AI become a new kind of evolutionary individual?

In a recent op-ed published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, SFI External Professor Michael Hochberg and co-author Paul Rainey explore whether deepening interdependence between humans and AI could lead to a new form of evolutionary individuality.

They suggest that if AI systems become deeply embedded in human life—structuring behavior, shaping cognition, and fostering dependence—the relationship could evolve into a new integrated unit or individual. Drawing parallels to the evolution of chromosomes from independent genes, multicellular organisms from single cells, and eusocial colonies from solitary ancestors, they suggest that such a transition could, in principle, meet the criteria for individuality in evolutionary terms.

As they write, “Through recursive feedback, where humans shape AI, and AI increasingly shapes human thought and action, AI may acquire a role not as a separate agent, but as a core architectural element of an emerging collective individual.”

But the authors argue that it is difficult to predict the ways in which such a transition will be adaptive or not. This underlines the importance of studying past transitions so that humans can shape and steer their coevolution with AI, with the dual objectives of cooperative integration and maintaining human agency.

The content is provided for information purposes only.