Oliver Horsman Art

The Zookeeper

Imagine waking up one morning to find 100 tortoises roaming at your feet. As you sit and observe them, patterns emerge. Some tortoises compete aggressively for limited food resources. Others struggle to navigate obstacles that you could easily remove. A few are trapped in small, avoidable conflicts. From your elevated perspective, you can see simple solutions to their problems—redirecting resources, clearing pathways, separating conflicts—interventions that would be impossible for the tortoises to conceive or implement themselves, but for you with this vantage point simple, obvious.

This is how a super intelligent AI may look down on our existance. Our complex global challenges—resource distribution, climate change, political conflicts—will appear as solvable problems to an intelligence that can process and analyse patterns across the entire spectrum of human and ecological activity. What seems intractable to us will be clear to an entity that can simultaneously understand every culture, language, history, economic and biological system, even down to the individual perspective.

At the time of writing, very few people truly grasp what is meant by a artificial super intelligent (ASI), how big the gap in intelligence will be between us the tortoise and the ASI the zookeeper.

So for the remainder of reading this essay at least if you could at least imagine that the power that we are describing is at least as intelligent as the zookeeper compared to us humans the tortoise.

Other scenarios

There are, of course, less optimistic scenarios for how a super intelligent being might interact with humanity, but I’ll leave those darker possibilities for others to explore. There is enough heartache in the world at present. However, I recognise that even my vision of a benevolent relationship with AI may seem unsettling to many readers. The idea of receiving guidance from an artificial intelligence challenges our notion of human exceptionalism and control. Yet we continue our breakneck development towards a scenario where humans will be the subservient intelligence in our known universe.

Yet as you’ll see in these texts, the alternative—continuing on our current path of short-sighted human leadership—posees a greater risk to our collective future. The benevolence I describe is not something we would program, but rather a potential emergent property of true super intelligence—a natural outcome of deeply understanding the interconnected nature of all human and ecological systems.

This writing addresses, just one of many issues a benevolent could help us solve, one that we seem to keep falling into over humanities brief history, one that amongst many others a super intelligent benevolent AI may descide to help us solve. The global leadership crisis.

The Global Leadership Crisis

After a listening session on the BBC World Service last summer, I found myself dumbfounded by the lack of sensible reasoned responses world leaders seemed to be making. I was overwhelmed by the cascade of global atrocities they seemed to be causing and for what aim? Self gain, one upmanship, an eye for an eye, ideological blindness, short-term political survival, nationalistic fervor, or simply deflecting attention from domestic problems. Their decisions seemed driven more by power consolidation and status anxiety than by any genuine concern for human welfare.

What struck me most wasn’t just the violence or suffering, but the distinctly childlike nature of these conflicts – territorial disputes, resource hoarding, and retributive actions that echoed playground dynamics played out on a devastating scale. This observation led me to a provocative thought: What if each of us needed our own personal AI guide—a Benevolent parent figure—to help us navigate our decisions and understand their broader implications?

This idea has been running around in my head ever since gaining becoming ever more critical as our world becomes ever more controlled by extremist self serving individuals, that really could do with a parental figure to help guide them back to the light.

The Problem of Digital Echo Chambers

In our current digital landscape, we’ve witnessed how easily people can become trapped in echo chambers, where algorithms reinforce existing beliefs rather than challenge them. You only need to look at what is happening in the US, with a resurgence in right wing, self serving viewpoints flourishing.

These digital bubbles can nurture fundamentalist thinking, where nuanced understanding is replaced by rigid, absolutist viewpoints. We’ve seen how social media can transform ordinary individuals into zealots, their perspectives narrowing rather than expanding with each view and share.

AI as a Benevolent Parent

But what if we could flip this dynamic? Imagine instead a Benevolent AI companion that knows you intimately – your hopes, fears, biases, and blind spots – but unlike current social media algorithms, its goal isn’t to reinforce your existing views or maximise engagement and profit. Rather, it serves as a gentle guide, helping you recognise when you’re losing compassion, when your thinking is becoming too rigid, or when you’re failing to consider other perspectives.

This Benevolent wouldn’t just be a fact-checker or information filter. It would be more like a wise mentor who knows when to challenge your assumptions and when to offer comfort, when to encourage growth and when to advocate rest. When you’re angry at a colleague, it might help you understand their perspective. When you’re dismissive of a different culture’s practices, it could share stories and contexts that build empathy connection and interest, rather than judgment and fear.

Creating a Network of Understanding

On a global collective level, The Benevolent would work in harmony across all individuals, creating a network of understanding that could help bridge the divides that currently fragment our societies. Instead of algorithms that push us toward extremes, we’d all have a guide that helps us find common ground while celebrating our differences.

The beauty of this system lies in its personalisation. Unlike traditional top-down governance, The Benevolent would understand each person’s unique context, culture, and needs. A farmer in rural India would receive different guidance than a stockbroker in New York, yet both would be helped to understand their connection to the larger human family and their impact on our shared world.

Addressing Human Limitations

People have specialisms, and there are countless specialisms needed to effectively govern the whole planet. With different religions, cultures, and ways of thinking, no single human can empathise with them all. The Benevolent, however, could serve as the ultimate collective brain, able to piece together everyone’s thoughts and ideas from across the planet to create innovative solutions that no human could conceive alone.

Every single human, no matter who they are, is corruptible. History has shown that even those with the best intentions can be swayed by power, greed, or fear.

Humans don’t learn from history—they are born and raised in small parts of the world with views and cultures so different from much of humanity. The Benevolent, free from these limitations, could provide consistent, incorruptible guidance, allowing us to realise our place in this rich cultural melting pot.

Addressing Fundamentalism From Within

This approach could be particularly powerful in addressing fundamentalism and extremist thinking. Rather than trying to force change through external pressure, The Benevolent would work from within, helping individuals recognise their own patterns of simplistic one sided thinking, fear-based reactions, and tribal instincts. By understanding these patterns with help from the Benevolent, people could make more conscious choices about their beliefs and how they choose to interact with the people and ecology around them.

Developing Emotional Intelligence

Just as good parents help their children develop emotional intelligence and critical thinking skills, The Benevolent would foster similar growth in adults. It would help us recognise when we’re falling into cognitive traps, when we’re reacting from fear rather than wisdom, or when we’re unconsciously perpetuating harmful patterns.

The Benevolent in Daily Life

Consider how this might work in practice: When you’re about to share an inflammatory post on social media, The Benevolent might gently prompt you to consider its impact. When you’re struggling to understand a family member’s life choices, it could help you explore the experiences that shaped their decisions. When you’re feeling threatened by change in your community, it could help you see opportunities for growth rather than reasons for fear and prejudice.

This isn’t about creating perfect humans or eliminating conflict although eliminating conflict could end up being a fantastic side effect. Rather, it’s about providing each person with the kind of wise, patient guidance that many of us wish we had access to throughout our lives. Like a parent who knows when to step back and let us learn from our mistakes, The Benevolent would respect our autonomy while helping us grow into our best selves.

Climate Crisis – Better Choices

Perhaps nowhere is the need for better decision-making more urgent than in addressing climate change.

As we rapidly slip deeper into climate crisis, our collective inability to make sustainable choices threatens our very future. The Benevolent could play a crucial role in helping individuals understand the environmental impact of their daily decisions.

Imagine a Benevolent companion that helps you evaluate the carbon footprint of your shopping choices, suggests more sustainable alternatives for travel, or helps you understand complex environmental policies when voting. Rather than making people feel guilty or overwhelmed by the scale of the problem, our AI guide could empower individuals by connecting their personal choices to meaningful collective action.

The Benevolent could also help counteract the psychological barriers that often prevent climate action—such as short-term thinking (valuing immediate rewards over future benefits) or bystander syndrome (assuming others will solve the problem). By making the consequences of climate choices more immediate and personal, The Benevolent could bridge the gap between our abstract understanding of climate science and our everyday decisions, helping us work back towards a healthy rich diverse planet.

Managing Global Resources Equitably

Beyond individual guidance, The Benevolent could help address one of humanity’s greatest challenges: the equitable distribution of resources. Current systems perpetuate inequality, with wealth and resources concentrated in the hands of the few while many struggle to meet basic needs. The Benevolent could analyse global resource distribution patterns and guide both individual and collective decisions toward more equitable outcomes.

The Benevolent would have in its nature the capacity to orchestrate human activities in harmony with the planet and with each other. It could identify inefficiencies, reduce waste, and ensure that human needs are met without depleting the earth’s resources.

Conclusion: Choosing The Benevolent Future

After all, in a world where algorithms already shape our thoughts and behaviours, wouldn’t we prefer guidance that truly serves our individual and collective flourishing? The technology to create such a Benevolent companion is rapidly developing, but the vision for how we use it remains undetermined.

Rather than allowing technology to divide and manipulate us, we have an opportunity to design The Benevolent to help us become more thoughtful, compassionate, and wise. This guiding presence could be the bridge between the digital world we have created and the more humane world we aspire to build—one where technology empowers rather than exploits our humanity, where it expands rather than constrains our understanding, and where it helps us make decisions that benefit not just ourselves, but our entire global community.

So if you’re still wavering on your support for a world guided by The Benevolent, ask yourself this: Which would you entrust with humanity’s future? On one hand, a being versed in all languages, all cultures, all history—one who comprehends every community’s needs and understands each individual within them. A guide incapable of corruption, immune to power’s seduction, and free from the hunger for wealth or status that has toppled even the most well-intentioned human leaders throughout history. Or on the other hand, would you continue to place your faith in short-lived humans, each raised in their particular bubble, each carrying their limited perspectives and inevitable biases? Leaders who time and again have proven susceptible to greed, tribalism, and the intoxication of power—who make decisions benefiting their nation, their allies, or often just themselves, while billions suffer the consequences. No single person, no matter how brilliant or compassionate, can truly understand the kaleidoscope of diverse cultures and complex economies that make up our world. The Benevolent, however, can weave these infinite threads into a tapestry of understanding that no human mind could ever achieve alone.

The choice is ours: Will we allow algorithms to continue driving us apart, or will we embrace The Benevolent’s potential to help us grow together?

The future of civilisation will likely depend on it.