AI: How Alien Intelligence Affects Your Business
Every time you look at your phone or computer you are probably seeing information about how AI will affect your business. Most of this information focuses on tips and business tools you can use to streamline your operations and connect with your customers. The discourse is mostly focused on helping us complete business tasks more efficiently and effectively.
This is only a small part of the story about how AI will affect your business. AI doesn’t just bring us new tools. It also brings us into a new information environment, completely changing the way we communicate with other people as we do our work.
Our New Neighbor - Alien Intelligence
Business was tough enough when all we had to deal with were other humans. But now we have a new neighbor, who is making the information environment that we work in much more complicated. This new neighbor is “Alien Intelligence,” or, AI.
We always assumed that the first alien intelligence we would encounter would arrive on some strange spacecraft, wielding a superior and distinct technology. We speculated, in our imaginations and in our popular culture, what effect this visiting alien intelligence would have on us, for better or worse. We watched the skies, but the little green men never arrived.
Suddenly, a new thinking being is here in our midst. Although it does travel near the speed of light, this alien intelligence didn't fly here from outer space. It was born right here, on earth, born out of the information systems that we created.
This alien intelligence was conceived by us, midwifed by us, and nurtured in its infancy by us, but is now distinct from us. To date, we have been the sole masters of our information environment, starting with language, and on to writing, the printing press, and then a rapid acceleration from the telegraph, telephone, radio, TV, computers, database science, the internet, and social media.
Now we are accelerating even faster into the latest stage in the evolution of our information environment, a stage where we are no longer alone. A stage where we share our information environment, and actually our whole world, with something that thinks differently from us. And just as human intelligence manifests itself in billions of humans, this new alien intelligence will manifest itself in billions, or trillions of different AIs, all engaged in their own sets of tasks.
Yuval Noah Harari is the first thinker I heard who teaches that AI is not “artificial” intelligence, because there is nothing artificial about it - It is alien intelligence. This alien intelligence is distinct from every other tool humans have created over the last three million years, from stone axes to supercomputers and the precision tools used by microsurgeons. Every tool we invented, so far, was designed to be used, and directed by us, for our own benefit. But this new alien intelligence isn’t a tool, it is an agent. It decides to do things and then it does those things. As you look at the way AI will affect your business, this is the most important framework for your thinking: It is an alien intelligence.
As Harari says, your coffee maker can’t decide one day that it’s going to start making orange juice. But alien intelligence is an agent that actually could decide to do new things. As AI develops beyond its current infancy stage, some of those things may be good for your business, some may be bad. Some may be really bad.
Information is coming at us in ways that are increasingly faster, higher volume, more dense, more persuasive, and more influential. We’ve had a hard time dealing with this evolving information environment while we’ve been alone. And now we are sharing our information environment with an alien intelligence who will affect us in ways that are unimaginable to us now. Expect to be overwhelmed, confused and manipulated.
How we deal with these changes in our information environment is one of the most powerful variables in influencing the future of our species. At a micro level, we can also say that how you deal with these changes in your work and business are among the most powerful variables that will drive your success.
We humans are also agents. We have powers of decision and action. Will you use your personal agency to help you benefit from this new alien intelligence, or will you make decisions and take actions that make you vulnerable to its dangers?
To help me think about how to deal with this new, crowded information environment, I look at AI operating on three levels:
The micro level
The macro level
The species level
As I share this framework with you, consider how it affects you in your work and business.
The Micro Level:
How individuals, companies and organizations interact with the alien intelligence.
This level is what we are mostly talking about these days when we discuss AI:
“Chat GPT automates the emails I send to my customers.”
“We’ve been able to reduce our warehouse staff by 60% with the help of AI.”
“I can never get a real human being on the phone whenever I call a company for customer service.”
These interactions are already a significant part of our lives, every day. The alien intelligence reaches into each one of our lives, every minute of every day.
A few weeks ago I returned to Chicago from 16 days in Europe. I walked up to the Global Entry camera kiosk at O’Hare Airport’s passport control area, after 10 hours on a plane and a really long walk through the airport, My glasses slightly askew and my beard, which is actually short and hard to mess up, looked a bit long and messed up. I’m sure I’ve never looked exactly like that before. As I approached the kiosk I was looking down, opening up my passport case and pulling out my global entry card, in case the guards asked to see it. I hadn’t broken my stride when suddenly, as I looked up, my picture popped up on the screen. The alien intelligence, which works and travels at near the speed of light, saw me, analyzed, interpreted and recognized me, and instantly figured out how to interact with me.
Alien Intelligence is affecting you, everyone who works in your company, and every one of your customers, competitors and community members, every minute of every day. Are you adapting your business thinking to acknowledge this new world, or is all of your AI focus directed at having ChatGPT improve your sales decks and automating your emails?
Trust that your competitors are planning to use this new information environment to their advantage, and against yours, in ways you can’t even imagine yet. How you think about your business interactions with alien intelligence at the micro level is critical to your success.
The Macro Level:
How the alien intelligence affects large groups of people
Although most of the talk about AI these days is focused on the micro level, there is a growing public conversation about how alien intelligence will affect our society on a macro level. Certain types of jobs will disappear, some companies will be big winners, while some will be big losers, and the geo-political landscape will change.
Many of these changes will help society and business, but there is also a strong likelihood that many large groups of people working in particular industries or job roles will be hurt. History is the study of change over time, and history books are littered with stories of tragedy and misfortune. The historical period we are entering will be no exception, and, in fact, its horrid toll on large groups of people could be greater than anything humanity has ever seen.
Constantly be vigilant and in learning mode about how these macro changes will affect your work and business, and continually use your quickly-accumulating knowledge to fuel your business decision-making. The environment in which you compete is headed for major change.
The Species Level:
How the alien intelligence will affect all of humanity
At the macro level, different groups of people will be affected in different ways. However, at the species level, we are all affected in similar ways.
This is the level at which Yuvall Noah Harari focuses much of his thinking and teaching, and I encourage you to read or listen to him. His 2025 book, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI, is, I believe, a must-read for understanding what’s happening to our world.
One of the biggest problems we are facing is called “The Alignment Problem.” How do we ensure that humanity’s needs and goals are aligned with the actions of the alien intelligence? Experts warn that it could be catastrophic if the needs and interests of alien intelligences don’t correspond with ours.
So far, we aren’t doing a good job figuring out the alignment problem, and major geo-political powers, and companies within those countries, are currently in an AI “arms race,” moving fast, so they can “win,” ignoring the need for global cooperation and trust-building. Fortunately, the U.S. Senate voted 99-1 to strip out the House’s provision for a 10-year ban on AI regulation from the recent budget reconciliation bill.
Yes, the alien intelligence may help us eradicate many terrible diseases, decrease poverty and improve many things about human life. But it could also eradicate us, or enslave us.
As with the micro and macro level, you need to be constantly vigilant and ‘in learning mode’ to benefit from these large scale changes, and protect yourself, as much as possible, from their dangers.
And we’re just getting started
Harari also points out that we are at the “amoeba” stage of AI development and the “T-Rex” stage of AI will be here in the rapidly-approaching future. To prepare yourself, think of AI not just as an improvement in computer technology but as a new period where we cohabitate with an alien intelligence, and plan your decisions and actions accordingly.