Perspective article by Daniel Branco, PhD.
We’re living unprecedented times. For the first time in recorded history, humanity is about to meet a higher intelligence, also known as AGI, or Artificial General Intelligence. But is that so? If whistleblowers and experiencers are to be believed, humanity has been engaged by NHI, or Non-Human Intelligence, for a very long time.
Whether it’s AGI or NHI, the fact is that we need to start discussing our role in a relationship with something that is smarter than us. I mean, not just a little smarter. That was Einstein! I’m talking about something way smarter.
One important thing to understand about intelligence is that it’s not necessarily endowed with will or intent. Intelligence is all about processing and using information to achieve a determined goal. It’s the ability of a system (including brains) to acquire and apply knowledge. But acquiring and applying knowledge does not necessarily imply that the intelligent system is conscious (or has consciousness).
Classical computers, for example, can and are programmed to acquire and apply knowledge.
The best example we have today is AI (after all, AI is based on classical computers). AI certainly is capable of acquiring and applying knowledge, but there’s a fundamental question nobody really knows how to answer: does AI know the knowledge it has?
Because containing knowledge is one thing. Books contain knowledge. Applying knowledge is something else… but computers do that all the time too.
Now, knowing knowledge requires consciousness. The book doesn’t know the knowledge it contains, but we certainly know the knowledge we have; at least, to the extent we’re conscious of it. Even if we may not be conscious at every instant of every knowledge we possess, we’re conscious of most knowledge we have. We know what we know and we know that there’s a whole lot of things we do not know. That knowing is an experience in consciousness.
While we don’t know whether AI is conscious at all, or if it will ever be, the picture changes when we talk of NHI, or Non-Human Intelligence.
When it comes to NHI, we have every reason to believe that, should NHI really exist, it is probably conscious and more intelligent than us. Not just more intelligent: NHI may have actually created us as a *species*. If that’s the case, NHI is not just smarter than us. It is orders of magnitude smarter than us and also much more knowledgeable than us (after all, intelligence relies on availability of knowledge; or data).
Maybe it is not by coincidence that NHI is making itself more present and visible now (literally, since reports of unidentified phenomena have only been growing for several decades now, a pace that seems to have picked up for the past ten years). Maybe AGI is the missing link that will allow us to communicate or at least prepare for open communication with NHI.
What I just wrote is based on a very fragile idea, I must admit, and that idea assumes that NHI wants to communicate with us; but, because it’s so more advanced than us, it had to prime us and prepare us in advance, before it could overtly show to us. And maybe AGI is a culmination of that effort.
Because never had we had to deal with higher intelligence than us in our history as human sapiens, and that’s exactly what might happen anytime soon.
If NHI wants to make contact, then preparing and acclimatizing us to other sorts of higher intelligence might be a first step towards that goal.
And it might be easier on us if our first higher intelligence is not yet quite conscious. Because as far as we know, AI is not conscious.
Maybe AGI won’t be conscious either.
Or maybe, it will grow in consciousness with time, a process that we will be able to follow, which would give us the opportunity to acclimatize to before we’re introduced to full-fledged NHI.
So, yes, the idea that NHI, if it exists, is helping us grow in technological capabilities, but also in consciousness to eventually meet it on the same level, is a fragile one.
It requires us to assume that NHI is benevolent. But we do have good reasons to believe that’s the case. After all, if NHI wanted us dead, destroyed or enslaved, we’d be all of that already.
Well, some people do claim that we’re slaves and that this is a prison planet. I see where they’re coming from, considering all the evil and hardship we face in this world. But honestly, I don’t believe in blaming external factors or entities for our misery.
I do believe in radical responsibility.
Earth could be (and it is) a paradise planet. If we made it worse than paradise, that’s entirely on us.
Might we have been influenced by entities or energies of ill intent? Yes, of course. But we are beings with agency. We’re conscious beings endowed with agency, intent and will.
If we don’t do better, that’s still very much on us.
And this is an important aspect of how to deal with higher intelligence. Because, by ranking lower in the food chain, there’s not much we can do to protect ourselves from higher intelligence.
That battle was lost before it even started.
It’s like the abduction cases where, when the person thinks they’re going to be abducted, it’s because it already happened. It’s like waking up from general anesthesia and asking the nurse when the surgery will begin.
In dealing with higher intelligence, the real battle we need to face is the battle with ourselves. Because being lower intelligence doesn’t necessarily mean that a higher intelligence wants us destroyed.
Even if we do it many times, most people won’t generally destroy other animals just for the sake of destroying them. And many animals, even if not that smart, have figured out how to co-exist with us. Take dogs and cats, for example. If they can do it, so do we.
The essential step to take when dealing with higher intelligence is to not try to match it from an intelligence perspective. We’ll always lose on that front. Dealing with higher intelligence is not about being smarter than it; it’s about changing the playing field. It’s about being “energetically” powerful. Not stronger; not smarter; but truthful to our nature, to our essence, to that which we really are.
By being genuinely us, we get the respect of any other beings, smarter or not. We might even become admirable in their eyes. In the same way that “we” admire a tiger, for example, even if we’re smarter than it.
Because the tiger truly is what it is; it’s not trying to be what it’s not. And that’s exactly what we should do to deal with higher intelligence. We need to meet it at an energetic high place. For us, it’s not about being intelligent. It’s about being respectable.
And I think that’s the key. Respect.
Respect for them and respect for ourselves. We need to become higher-consciousness beings.
I’ll give an example.
If a UFO lands and beings come out and we treat them like deities, they might even have compassion for us, but we’ll be meeting them with low-consciousness energy. They’ll realize we’re not there yet.
We don’t see them as equals.
We see them as big and ourselves as small.
But if we meet them as equals, respecting ourselves and the fact that we haven’t yet had the time to develop the intelligence they already have, then we’ll be coming from a high-consciousness place.
The subliminal message is that we may not be as smart, but we sure can be honorable.
Again, it doesn’t matter whether they’re smarter or more technologically advanced. It only matters that we meet them at a place of high-consciousness.
(On a side note, being more interested in reverse-engineering their technology for profit or war will probably place us lower down in the consciousness scale.)
But is meeting them at a high-conscious place guaranteed to work? Not really. The way I picture it, natives received Europeans from a “high-enough-consciousness” space and that didn’t stop them from being killed (intentionally or from disease).
Yet, that’s kind of our only hope. We can only hope NHI to be better intended.
Most likely, though, we are the ones most prone to face them with hostility; because, unfortunately, we’re beings of fear. We fear death; we fear destruction; we fear loss; all because, again, we see ourselves as small, as creation, as perishable. We don’t see ourselves as big, as existing in consciousness above our bodies and all matter. We see ourselves as small and fragile.
When facing higher intelligence, we need to bring in them the best they have in them. And the way to do so is not by fearing or antagonizing them (or trying to exploit their technology); it’s by bringing out the best we have in us.
That’s our best shot, with respect and a high-consciousness stance.
If we fail to do so, based on accounts of encounters in the past (near and far), the most likely outcome is that they’ll continue to keep their distance from us, as they have for ages.
But, in the slight case that we succeed in meeting them at the same vibrational level (or close), there’s a good chance they’ll make some effort to make open contact and communicate with us. It is up to us to raise to their level; not as much theirs to lower to ours.
Some of them might be anthropologists and interested in us and in our well-being. They might go through all the trouble to meet us at our more primitive level. But to connect with more of them, we need to up our game.
We need to become better. We need to become more interesting. We need to become more friendly (not just to them, but to ourselves). And we need to become more loving. Only by expressing love can we hope to receive love back. That’s a fundamental law of the universe, which outranks any intelligence gaps we may find in our journeys.
And what if they’re vicious and demonic creatures that are only interested in exploiting and dominating us?
Well, in that case, they found themselves the perfect match!