A Salute to Nature

As I jog at sunrise each day, I am reminded that we should not take nature for granted. Our illusion of superiority relative to nature is unwarranted. Even though birds knew long ago how to fly by flapping their wings, starting with the <a href="https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/birds/archaeopteryx.html" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Archaeopteryx lithographica</a> 150 million years ago, the Wright Brothers accomplished the <a href="https://spacecenter.org/a-look-back-at-the-wright-brothers-first-flight/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">first powered human flight</a> in 1903, just 120 years ago — the last percent of a percent of human history. The latest technology that we boast about is artificial intelligence (AI) of Large Language Models (LLMs). But training a single LLM like ChatGPT-3, <a href="https://www.washington.edu/news/2023/07/27/how-much-energy-does-chatgpt-use/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">consumes</a> a power of up to 10 gigawatt-hour (GWh), equivalent to the yearly electricity consumption of over 1,000 U.S. households. For comparison, the human brain operates on a power budget of about 12 watts, an order of magnitude lower than a typical desktop or a common light bulb. Instead of the giant computer rooms used to operate LLMs, the human brain is stored in a compact enclosure, limited by the physical scale of the birth canal during delivery. Our pride of operating remotely technological gadgets is flagshiped by the <a href="https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Perseverance Rover</a> or the <a href="https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Ingenuity helicopter</a> on Mars, which are operated by engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. This feels like helicopter parenting. In contrast, the dandelion flower does not send guidance to its seeds after they get carried by the wind to remote locations. These seeds function autonomously, fulfilling their mission of planting the dandelion genetic materials in fertile grounds. We are yet to develop autonomous self-replicating probes that carry AI astronauts with 3D printers and could seed remote exo-planets with lifeforms out of the raw-materials and nutrients they find on the surface. Rather than carry lifeforms from planet Earth to interstellar space, this would constitute an energy-efficient way of replicating the genetic information content we wish to promote in the Milky Way galaxy. <a href="https://avi-loeb.medium.com/a-salute-to-nature-3dce68e04c74">Click Here</a>