Humanity [eats] Humanity

There’s this newsletter, Thinking Forward by MIT Sloan, that I subscribed to God knows how long ago. A few days ago, I read something unusual:

Philosophy [eats] AI.

Lately, I keep circling back to the same thought. I was researching AI hiring patterns, drafting some pieces on how AI companies overwhelmingly hire engineers and hard scientists. The usual suspects: mathematicians, computer engineers, physicists.

But when it comes to ethics, social impact?

I expected—no, I dared to think—I’d find sociologists, anthropologists or historians in the mix. But I didn’t.

So when I saw “Philosophy” in that headline I couldn’t help myself but to click and see what it was about.

The argument they laid out:
Software [eats] the world.
AI [eats] software.
Philosophy [eats] AI.

Sure, every single statement can be bent, argued, flipped inside out. But today, I like the idea.

Because let’s be honest—it’s not every day you see something like this published. And yeah, I’m biased. I’m not a techie. I like linking dots. I follow curiosity.

But then, as I was still trying to palate the awkward taste of it…
Two lightning-strike thoughts hit me.

A chess game.
Software → AI → Philosophy → ???
Next move?

I was playing with GPT, pushing ethical prompting discussions (not a fresh conversation—it remembers some things). So I threw the question back:

What’s checkmate?

GPT answered:
Humanity [eats] Philosophy.

I pushed further. Argued from different angles.
And eventually, we landed on:
Humanity [eats] Humanity.

That’s when I stopped sparring and decided to share these thoughts with you.


Humanity [eats] Humanity has layers.
Not a pre-cooked conclusion.

It means that behind AI, software, and our definition of “the world”—there are still humans.

It also means that, historically, humans have always fought each other.
Sometimes for survival.

  • 200 humans.
  • Food for 100.
  • What happened next?

But even the worst of us don’t exist in total selfishness. Even monsters form alliances.

Over time, culture and technology evolved. Food scarcity—real “not enough food” scarcity—stopped being a reason to kill.

So when I say Humanity [eats] Humanity, I’m not talking about cannibalism.
I’m talking about the fight for survival.

And that brings us to today.

Do we still have a reason to eat each other?

We dress it up differently now—economics, power struggles, digital warfare—but the cycle remains.

And AI? AI doesn’t change the core of it.

I remember reading The Sociological Imagination by C. Wright Mills. There was this reference: “Bomb H.”
Took me years to realize he meant the hydrogen bomb and linking that to Oppenheimer 1and read about Teller.

When atomic destruction wasn’t enough, we invented worse.
Respected scientists put their talent together and gave it their best shot.

Because humanity doesn’t just eat itself.
It can eat everything.


Today, let’s see for how long, self-aware generative AI is one among those big fears.
Out of control, it could kill us all.”

AI [eats] Humanity.

But before we even get to that dystopia—
What has humanity already done?

Did we decide to be Pandora and slam the box shut before we found hope?

We have this habit of personifying our creations.
Tamagotchis. Wilson from Cast Away. AI.

It feels natural. As if it were human.
But it isn’t. It won’t ever be.

And when you follow that line of thought—when you see what history shows us—
Have we learned anything?

What if we broke the pattern?
What if we ripped it up from its roots and rewrote it?

Humanity {creates} Humanity.

Would it be impossible? No.
Would it be difficult? Yes.
But not many good things are easy.

And eating each other?
That’s not easy either.

It’s an objective waste of talent, time… happiness… lives.

Disruption won’t come from inventing new cutlery to eat each other with.
Real change comes from choosing a different game. And by choosing differently we become something else. We proof it can be done.

True leaders don’t just lead. They testify
That they care about those they lead.

Because Humanity [eats] Humanity is a loop.
So it’s Humanity {creates} Humanity.  

So what you gonna be?

References and further notes:

Post image is from HA! (historia-arte.com), Saturn devouring his son, by Peter Paul Rubens.

I used a number of AI apps to work on this post. Before publishing I did minor tweaks but it was meanly GPT transforming my notes and countless prompts for tweaking. Something interesting is the (small) memory it has and how it impacts end results. It’s not something I achieved quick, but this version looked good and I decided to publish it as it was.

Something I’ve also been thinking about is the impact of using AI on our own thinking and writing. This post was unique for me because it didn’t feel “AI bs” (boring stuff ;b). I also paste it on an “AI dectector” (ZeroGPT.com) and the result read “100% human”. That brings some food for thougths on how iteration can impact both sides -AI and Human, of the creative ecuation.

AI Apps I’ve used below. I usually start with reading, notes and brainstorming. Something I’ve starting doing not long ago is going back and forth along different AIs… sometimes is a mess, sometimes you end up with texts like this.

  1. A post (series?) on scratched notes and still to be worked on is about Oppenheimer and his reflection on the part he took in History. I’ll leave this quote and an interview video found on Youtube.
    “[…]The extreme dangers to mankind inherent in the proposal [hydrogen bomb project] wholly outweigh any military advantages that could come from this development.”

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