BY HARRY WEEKES
Artificial Intelligence is everywhere. Increasingly, I see ads for how AI will help me invest wisely, travel thoughtfully, and generally streamline and support my life. AI is in my email, on my phone, and in every Internet search I conduct. More and more, I hear about the rise of AI companions, where people set up an AI Buddy to, as one article bluntly states, “never criticize you, never cheat on you, never have a bad day and insult you, and to always be interested in you.” As I considered people wanting this kind of digital pal, a positive thought shot through my mind, nicely replacing a looming sense of dread—“This AI companion sounds like a dog.”
An interesting thing about thoughts… some of them come in as an entire story. A smile will flit across someone’s face, I’ll ask, “What are you thinking about?” and they will respond elaborately. In a millisecond, something comes to mind, but it comes as a saga.
So here is a pint-size version of what entered my thinking with the above connection of AI companions and dogs. What if the wolf-human relationship was a collaboration? What if it wasn’t just humans taming wolves, but rather a mutualistic partnership that both parties willingly entered? What would this look like? What would it mean?
We can easily string together the plausible human story. “We lived in the same place as wolves and we both competed for similar kinds of food. Wolves scavenged from us, we scavenged from them, and, lo and behold, one day someone came across a wolf puppy and raised it.” Skip to teacup poodles, Schnauzers, and black Labs.
There is a tendency to reconstruct the past based on the present, which always creates certain blind spots. In this example, when we think of the first wolves and humans, we think of modern wolves and modern humans, neither of which was present at first contact.
We are also prone to human exceptionalism, believing that humans are both a dominant physical and mental form. This makes trying to understand how a wolf thinks an almost impossible empathy leap.
But let’s consider some numbers. Early wolves and early hominids arrived in Europe about the same time (400,000 years ago). From those early beginnings, what were both relatively small packs, literally exploded. Wolf populations are thought to have been between 200,000-250,000, whereas Neanderthals came in at around 100,000 strong. Today? There are 900 million dogs on the planet and over 8.2 billion humans. Ummm, in a game where numbers matter, dogs and people won.
And since dogs and wolves still interbreed successfully, and modern humans still carry shared Neanderthal DNA, there is at least a plausible narrative that this has been a highly successful mutualistic relationship.
So now, I’m on a mildly obsessive quest to consider all the ways wolf and human ecology supported and support this greatest of partnerships. AI will almost certainly enable this mental quest, as it played a heavy hand in finding the preliminary facts and figures above.
Even as I give myself over to our digital overlords, though, I want to remember the jumping-off point. Reading about our desire to have a companion that is always there for us and greets us with equanimity, poise, love, and genuine happiness. I don’t think I’m going online for this. Rather, I will sit in my garage for another few seconds each time I come home and simply wait for the dogs.
My goal now is to be worthy of them, so that they never second guess that decision their ancestors made so many thousands of years ago.
Harry Weekes is the founder and head of school at The Sage School in Hailey. This is his 53rd year in the Wood River Valley, where he lives with Hilary and two mini-Dachshunds. The baby members of their flock have now become adults—Georgia and Simon are fledging in North Carolina, and Penelope is fledging in Vermont.
