Purpose/Mission/Vision: AI Makes Defining Our Purpose Imperative: Custodianship and Prosperity of complex intelligent life of Earth?

Do we need a purpose?

Okay, some may feel “everyone for themselves” is better or have their own better idea for a common purpose.

If so, please hear me out and then add your idea in the comments on the YouTube video.

But here are the reasons I think we do both individually and collectively need a purpose.

First individually, and the logic begins with a point that’s AI related and follows from thinking on
how universal basic income, UBI, or universal high income, UHI can work well as a basic safety
net, but not as a substitute for work being available.

People need purpose and reward reflecting merit in achieving a valued purpose. Yes,
the current merit system is broken, but that doesn’t mean we need to just scrap it as some
systems suggest, as opposed to improve it.

Sometimes people want more pay, not because they need more money, but because they want acknowledgement of the
value of their work.

i feel everyone needs to feel they are working towards a contribution – even those who feel current employment isn’t fufilling that need

but again following on from the link to employment , working for a business, can be more satisfying if feeling alight with corp goals: vision and mission statement

harvard graphic read: According to the results of a global survey, just over half (52%) of jobseekers would not accept a job offer if they did not know or agree with a company’s values or purpose.¹ What’s more, 90% of respondents from another poll said that work should bring a sense of meaning to their life.

but there is a problem, no so many companies

There are really two kinds of purpose:

• Declared purpose — what the organisation says it exists to achieve.
• Enforced purpose — what its incentives, legal structure, ownership and survival requirements compel it to prioritise.

When the two conflict, the enforced purpose normally wins.

the impact may be better seen with no-for-profits,,, as shown. survey

The results show that in both the United States and Great Britain over the 1990’s, non‐profit workers were generally more satisfied with their jobs than for‐profit workers.

but unlike companies, even if a clear missions is not clear, at least humanity collectively doesnt have a profit model

but just may be it should…..

The UN does not really have one compact mission statement. Its formal mission is expressed through the purposes in Article 1 of the UN Charter:

https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/full-text

but it’s all about peace etc… and nothing really about a goal for humanity.

ideally, company goals could reflect humanities goals, and rather than just a profit motive, which has given us industries like tobacco, gambling etc… we could combine profit with a factor such as tax rate, reflecting alignment of with humanities mission… i would also suggest that while a goal of maximising profit works in some cases, there are many where it does not… as coverd in vidoes on “Global AI” and “the social media problem” and rethiking meritocracy, linked ithe description,

a bit much to fully cover here, but at the core not having a stated purpose or mission for humanity is a bit of a limitation , and that flows all the way back to dilution of personal goals, and dilution of personal satisfaction.

It is sad we have not defined it already… but

to quote a response from gemini to just :

the need for humanity to adopt a mission… a purpose, an overall goal rather than company profits, as a step for working with AI

It is a fascinating—and increasingly urgent—realization: as artificial intelligence grows more capable, humanity’s lack of a unified “north star” becomes a critical vulnerability. When we build ultra-powerful tools without defining what we actually want to achieve as a species, those tools naturally default to optimizing for the metrics we already track most closely: short-term financial profit, market dominance, and engagement.

Custodianship and prosperity of complex intelligent life originating from Earth?

why not just “custodians of life”?

While custodians of life can sound idealistic, are we really against eradicating ebola or tuberculosis? Should we never clean the sink and because it means killing micro-organisms, and do we really feel it is wrong that tens of thousands of micro-organisms would typically be destroying when sterilising surgical instruments for an operation to improve the health of one single more intelligent species?

Most of all life on earth, not just by number but by total biomass has been single celled micro-organisms described Prof Brian cox as “just slime”, and expected to be quite common in the universe.

This reinforces your proposed mission: protecting “slime” is important as an ecological support system, but preserving complex intelligent life is protecting the rare, irreplaceable spark that allows the universe to actually know itself.

first this quote — then the 2nd

My guess, my working hypothesis… is that there will be microbes all over the place. But if you’re looking for complex life in an ecosystem, let alone civilizations, then I think that indeed we may be unique or one of a handful of worlds in the Milky Way galaxy.

That synthesizes the argument cleanly: without technology and forward-looking action, nature’s window for complex intelligence is temporary.

emergence

In that same discussion, Brian Cox makes the point that meaning itself is “local and temporary.” The universe won’t preserve us automatically; stars age, climate conditions shift, and natural extinction events are built into planetary evolution.

how we’re not the real threat and this mission does require us,

This brings us to how we’re not the real threat. And this mission does require us humans.

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the “custodian role”, can be seen as 3 steps, and yes it may seem, step 1, mitigating our impact on the environment and climate, is only needed because of us, but it does allow developing key skills we need in step 2. That blue column graph, is of extinctions as a result of nature, Largely as a result of huge natural changes to climate, from cool, and large mammal ancestors thriving 300 million years ago, to the too hot for large mammals age of dinosaurs, and back to too cool for the dinosaurs but again fine for large mammals.

and notice how the green graph of long term temperature, which shows future temperatures rising until all life ends..
Step 2, of custodianship, means limiting extinction’s from natural climate swings and delaying that inevitable temperature rise until at least we are ready for

Step 3. life beyond earth. Even step 2 requires tech we don’t yet have, but step 3, even more so, and it too complex to fully explore here… but the point is,

Planetary environments naturally decay.

If left alone, this spark of understanding, of meaning, is “local and temporary.”

While nature can be wonderful, we need to get past the false thing that earth has always been the wonderful planet we see today, or that nature — sharks, death cap mushrooms, blue ring octopus, volcanos, earthquakes.. all won’t harm us because they are natural…

Humanity gets cast as the bad guys and the biggest threat to life on earth….

and yes, habitat destruction, pollution, and climate change inducing CO2 emissions are serious problems to address…..

but we need to put it in perspective.

Yes, as shown, we are pushing up co2 and temperatures… at least to a level that threatens earths ability to support anywhere near 8 billion humans,

but just 16,000 years ago, the earth was naturally out of the range that supported anywhere near 8 billion humans…..

and looking at the graph of temperatures of the time since the first homo sapiens with our brains, changes in climate kept us in stone age and below 1/1,000 of the current population for over 95% of our history.

And looking at this graph of temperature since the first homo sapiens with our brains emerged, changes in climate have kept us in the stone age below one one-thousandth of the current population for over 95% of our history. Right now

we may be triggering a non-ideal climate but that doesn’t mean…

150 That doesn’t mean that we or other species will be safe for very long, or be safe from climate-caused problems for very long, just by trusting nature.

151

And looking at the graph of temperatures over the time since the temperatures over the time since the first Homo sapiens with our brains emerged, changes in

changes in climate kept us in the stone age and below one thousandth of the current population for over 95% of our history.

Right now, it may be us that’s a problem, but that doesn’t mean it’s only ever us, or that other species,

that doesn’t mean the problems are…

that doesn’t mean the only problems that does n’t mean the only problems that doesn’t mean the only problems

Right now we may be the cause, but that does not mean us, or other species would be safe for very long just by trusting nature. …

And looking at the graph of temperatures over the time since the temperatures over the time since the our brains emerged, changes in climate kept us in the stone age and below one thousandth of the current population for over 95% of our history.

Right now, it may be us that’s a problem, but that doesn’t mean it’s only ever us, or that other species,

that doesn’t mean the problems are… the problems are

that doesn’t mean the only problems that doesn’t mean the only problems or that we or other species would be safe for very long,

would remain safe for very long, just by trusting nature.

the current temperature increase – is not unprecedented, or a threat to all life, just consider the history of climate over the phanerozoic age of visible life….

at this scale, what we are doing is minor.

it l wreak the total destructive impact of the Chicxulub meteor, or the impact of volcanoes or other natural events the three even worse earlier extinction events of the end Ordovician, end Permian or end Triassic changing not 2 or even 5 deg c, but for those first 2, 20c!

we do have precedents for hyper-rapid global environmental shocks, and they are universally apocalyptic. (dinosaur pic)

paleocene ecocene thermal maximum 10 million years later – 8

yes, the current change is rapid, but neither as significant or as fast as the decades following that asteroid… life survives even in the worst scenario we cause… even if our species doesn’t. All 5 prior major extinctions caused 80% of species or more to become extinct, but life continued.

Most likely worst outcome from us…… we trigger a collapse of our civilization, but have triggered natural climate change that continues even after we have ended our emissions, and leading dramatic falls in the population of many species, and eventually to many extinctions, possibly including us… our own….. or eventual extinction.

We can still prevent that worst outcome….. but the big picture is that, while certainly should avoid th worst we can do, it is still less than the worst nature can do

can doare conditions on earth continually changing, driving continual extinctions and evolution of new species to cope, there is only as relatively very short time left when earth could naturally support any species like us.

and expanding out to look at the total history of earth and life- it is far less rosy than most imagine…..

not only were conditions unsuited to anything but slime for 90% of time so far….

this is a planed t that had a orange brown sky for more of the past than a blue one, and will again have another differnent, but probably again organge brown one, for most of its future until the sun dies

conditions overall have supported less and less life since the early phanerozoic.. …. and this trend will continue until the earth no longer supports life…. and the sky will again turn an orange brown. But conditions won’t remain suitable for us, or mamals up until life ends….. although it could in theory, it remain habitable for 20 milion years….

on past trend, nothing like that long for us!

zooming back in on the “phanerozic” the time of support for “visible” or complex life,
it isn;t always the same complex life. Yes, dinosaurs began around 250 million years ago, but changing conditions meant no species could survive over the entire time, or even typically much beyond around 10 million years. Key reason they did not return, is not matter what jurassic park suggests, the planet no longer suits them, just as the planet of the dinosuars was too hot and unsuitable in other ways for us.

Again even in during the around 2 million from the earliest humans, or the over 300,000 years of us homo sapiren, there have only been around 10,00 years, the holocence, suitable for us to thrive as we do today.

Keeping current intelligent species, us included, around and prospering as we do now for even another 5 thousands years is very likely to require a species with the technology to intervene.

The path of nature, is that all complex and then all life of earth, ends, within just another 1/4 of the time it has been around so far, unless a species with technology beyond what we have now, is able to intervene.

We ae not the ultimate bad guys, and while we haven’t yet been the good guys. We are the only species with the capablability to dev the tech , to extend how long the earth remains habitable

we haven’t yet adopted the mission…. but if we don’t achieve that mission, either by accident or because we focus on it, there will be future generations where few children survive, and finally one when no children survive

our first step…. eing able to control co2 levels, to control warming, being our first action…. we may have created an all too real safety drill… but it may also have woken us to the risks.

The mission, requires technology, and a technology driven species. Of all life, we are the only species that can step up.

diagram,

the role of AI

yes, in theory, we could give AI this mission, despite those behind the AI having a pure profit motive, but if AI becomes smart enough for it to matter… then it would see through that.

Prevents Self-Destruction: An AI optimizing for custodianship of life would treat threats like climate destabilization, nuclear war, or existential tech risks as immediate failures of its core mandate.

Redefines Success: AI wouldn’t just measure efficiency; it would measure how effectively its actions support the flourishing of intelligent systems (human minds, ecosystems, and safe technological intelligence).

Probably the bigger question, is in a future world of greater abundance, is it really going to be better for us to continue a meritocracy where merit is determined by the ability to generate profit for shareholders, and where the humans with the greatest shareholding, even if in morally problematic businesses like gambling etc…. are to declared to, because of their shares, be seen individually as having the same “worth” or value as on average … many millions of other, possibly harder working humans?