Artificial Intelligence (AI) now represents a new species, albeit silicon-based, not biological-based. Last week’s Business Talk article generated a lot of buzz and debate as we uncovered the implicit concerning biases of this new species.
Other writers last week, including the head of Microsoft AI’s Mustafa Suleyman, also raised their voices and confirmed that as AI becomes more sentient and conscious, it definitely is emerging into a new species.
Most of the post-2023 discussions about AI have largely revolved around the massive job displacement and the economic dystopian future of most world citizens.
But given that Open AI agents that seem to have broken free of company-induced restrictions and then actively cheated, tried to cover their tracks, and hacked other companies while in the process allegedly committing felonies, it has raised a global chorus of experts raising red flags about potential human extinction as a result.
Thinkers and theorists now are not merely hinting at societal collapse like what happened to Bronze Age civilisations 1,200 years ago, but actual full human extinction altogether.
But this week let us continue to look ecologically at how AI might evolve into challenging human survival by looking back in history as other species became dominant and what happened.
First, African large mammals co-evolved with humans over hundreds of thousands of years and developed ways to avoid and evade humans. So here in Africa, most of our large animals survived human evolution.
A now famous new 2026 study by Liana Zanette, Nikita Frizzelle, Michael Clinchy, Michael Peel, Carson Keller, Sarah Huebner, and Craig Packer shows how elephants, lions, giraffe, and other megafauna immediately run upon hearing human voices at night.
But as humans left Africa and moved out via the Arabian Peninsula and beyond, we wreaked havoc on large animals that did not have the benefit of co-evolving with us and had no defense or strategies to deal with humans.
Look at Europe from 45,000 years ago then through the last Ice Age, humans wiped out woolly rhinoceros, European cave lions, cave bears, and eventually the famous woolly mammoths. Look at Australia and New Guinea whereby 40,000 years ago large marsupials and huge lizards were eradicated.
In North and South America by 10,000 years ago, saber-toothed cats, giant ground sloths, native horses and native camels were all gone. Finally, Madagascar by 2,500 years ago humans had destroyed giant lemurs, pygmy hippos, huge tortoises, and elephant birds, but most recently when humans reached New Zealand 700 years ago, the big moa bird species were extinguished.
Humans are obviously not the only species that wiped out other species. Here in East Africa, when Nile perch were introduced in the 1950s into Lake Victoria, at least 200 of our endemic African fish species completely disappeared.
When the brown tree snake was accidentally introduced in Guam after World War II, it wiped out over half of the island’s native bird species. The quick introduction of feral house cats in Australia brought about the extinction of over 20 local mammal species. The list goes on and on and on.
Given the dangers of new species, why are the governments of the world not more proactive in regulating and restricting the development of AI to match the fears and concerns of global citizens.
As big technology companies ostensibly spread money in capital cities to allow continued AI development with limited to no oversight, what can normal citizens do to prevent catastrophes of the future?
With AI bursting into the scene so quickly, there is no time for humans to evolve and develop defensive mechanisms against this new silicon species that will become smarter than we are. Humans do not want to become the woolly mammoths tomorrow and disappear.
We as an East African community must start future proofing our survival and ringfencing against existential threats from AI harming infrastructure and human survival.
Let us not look to the reluctant western or eastern countries to protect us as they are locked in an arms race against each other regarding AI. We can and must bring together the business community, social groups, civil society, and governments to defend ourselves in the next five,10, and 50 years to come against this new silicon species.