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Included100 Million Years Ahead
Why the Future of AI Looks More Like an Ant Colony Than a Brain
By Anthony O'Connell
Where does intelligence live? Not in the ant. A colony of ants runs a desert for decades and not one of them knows the plan. This book follows that idea through cities, markets and bodies, and then asks what it means for AI.
Editions
Ebook — EPUB and PDF in one download
You get an EPUB and a PDF. The download link appears as soon as payment clears.
The ebook
What you get
One purchase, both files: the EPUB for any reading app, and the PDF set as the printed book. Download them as soon as payment clears.
PDF
The typeset edition
6 × 9 inches, set as it would be printed. Best on a tablet, a large screen, or paper.
IncludedEverything
One download
The EPUB and the PDF together, with a short note on reading them.
IncludedWhat the book argues
Twenty-two chapters in three movements, with a prologue and an epilogue. Each one builds on the last.
Movement One
The Colony
Chapters 1 to 7
A harvester ant colony in the Arizona desert, told through biology alone. No ant knows the plan, and no ant makes the decisions. The colony still finds food, defends its borders and lives for decades. The queen is not in charge.
Movement Two
The Architecture
Chapters 8 to 16
The same pattern again in a city, a market, a scientific community, a body, a brain, a language and a ledger. Six things appear every time. Once you can name them, you can see them everywhere.
Movement Three
The Implications
Chapters 17 to 22
A short hinge on carbon and silicon, then AI. What general intelligence is, why one bigger model hits a ceiling, and why alignment is a property of the system a model lives in, not a property of the model.
The Gordon Test
In 1950 Alan Turing replaced the question "can a machine think" with a game: put one machine behind a curtain and talk to it. That test looks at one agent. It assumes the intelligence is inside the agent.
The book offers a second test, named for the biologist Deborah Gordon, who has watched one ant colony since 1985.
- 1 Freeze Nothing inside any agent is allowed to change.
- 2 Let it run Let the shared space between the agents keep running.
- 3 Wait Return after time has passed.
- 4 Ask Give the system a problem it has never faced.
If the system solves today what it could not solve before, while every agent is exactly the agent it was, then the new skill did not come from the agents. It built up between them.
About the author
Anthony O'Connell has built websites for thirty years and AI systems for eight. He builds ONE, a platform where people and agents work in the same shared space.
Questions
What do I get when I buy the ebook?
One download with the book as an EPUB and as a PDF. Read it on a phone, an e-reader or a laptop. There is no DRM.
Can I read before I buy?
Yes. The web edition is free to read from the first chapter. Use the link at the top of this page.
What does pre-order mean for the printed books?
We charge your card now and ship when printing is ready. Ships when the first print run is ready. We'll email you before it ships, and you can cancel for a full refund until then. We do not have a ship date, so we will not invent one.
Can I pay with crypto?
Not for printed books. A parcel needs a shipping address and a priced shipping rate, and we only offer that on card.
Do I need to know about AI or biology?
No. Every idea arrives through something you already half know. The book is written for a reader who is curious and busy.
Is there a course?
Yes. It teaches you to use the same six-part notation on a system you work in. See the course page below.
The course
Read it, then use it
The book hands you the key. The course watches you open locks. Each lesson takes one idea from the book and has you apply it to a system you work inside.
See the course