(This text is just there so that actual content isn’t in the preview.)
New research programmes. This discovery would give rise to a lot of them. I don’t think listing different ones is unreasonable here, so here are some: [7]
Careful examination of the colonies themselves. What algorithms are they executing? What are the communication mechanisms? Is there discernible structure? How does it work?
Attempts to use similar mechanisms in silico. Just as biological neurons inspired neural networks, there would be many attempts to model computer systems on (simplifications of) ant colonies.
Investigation into what changed. Did it affect widely separated colonies at the same time? (This would suggest divine intervention, Sheldrake-style morphic resonance, etc.) Did it spread from colony to colony, and if so how? Whatever the cause, is it something we can somehow apply to other systems, or apply multiple times to one colony for extra intelligence? Does it suggest that some single change can make other complex but unintelligent systems become intelligent?
Biological examination of the individual ants. What’s the nature of the communication etc. that they do? Are there interesting differences between the ants in smarter versus dimmer colonies?
Maybe there’d be a shakeup in philosophy of mind. E.g., anyone who thinks that for some reason real thinking can only happen in human brains, or in things that somehow share structure or materials with human brains, now has an actual concrete counterexample. All those thought experiments about replacing neurons one by one have counterparts involving replacing ants one by one, and maybe that can even actually be done.
Do intelligent ant colonies communicate with one another? If so, how? Do we need to rewrite everything in linguistics?
Ant-thropology. Are there ant-colony societies? (Maybe not at first, if they only just gained sentience. So maybe we get to observe societies forming from scratch, which could be super-exciting.)
Changes in individual humans’ thinking, arising from knowing about intelligent ant colonies. [2]
At the moment, most people—even e.g. vegetarians—don’t much mind harming or killing insects. If an insect might be a vital part of an intelligent system, maybe that changes.
If there is a whole nother intelligent species out there, maybe that makes other humans seem more like us than before. Perhaps racism, sexism, etc. would reduce.
Political and quasi-political consequences. [8]
It’s not clear to me whether nations should consider their intelligent ant colonies people and/or citizens, but I bet some people would be very insistent that they should and other people would be very insistent that they shouldn’t. (Perhaps sincerely, perhaps because of perceived political gain or loss.) The rights and welfare of intelligent ant colonies would inevitably become a politically sensitive topic. In countries with strong political polarization, presumably particular views on ant colonies would become part of the major political coalitions’ idea-clusters, which in turn might result in some realignment as people with strong opinions on ants move from one coalition to another.
If ant colonies gained any sort of rights or protections, a lot of people would resent that. (”… coming here, taking our lawns, …”) This might spawn a new sort of angry populism, blaming all the world’s troubles on the ants.
Conversely, the ant colonies would provide an exciting new metaphor for extremists to use about humans they didn’t like (people with the wrong colour of skin, the wrong religion, the wrong parentage, etc.).
Legal changes to give ant colonies rights and responsibilities would be a big deal in themselves and might have interesting side effects (e.g., if it were done by broadening the definition of “person”, then maybe some other things besides humans and ant colonies would suddenly qualify).
If in any places ant colonies gained the right to vote, or other access to political power or leverage, there could be major shifts in the balance of power (even among humans).
Perhaps in some places humans would try to wipe out ant colonies, seeing them as rival claimants to the land or something. It’s not clear to me how straightforward this would be. If straightforward, the main (local) consequence would be that some would see these people as heroes while others would see them as mass-murderers; perhaps the debate might resemble ones about abortion. If not straightforward, though, the consequences might be more interesting. War between humans and ant colonies? (One can imagine the ant colonies having some interesting ways of striking back.) Drastic anti-ant measures with knock-on consequences for other humans, other animals, the environment, perhaps.
If the ant colonies turned out to be better at defending themselves than one would immediately expect, at some point we might end up with humans living under ant-colony rulers. I for one would welcome our new insect overlords. (This seems a really unlikely outcome, because we have technology and presumably they don’t. But perhaps that might change as rapidly as their intelligence did, somehow.)
Ants live more readily in some parts of the world than others. Places with more ant colonies might be at a substantial economic advantage (suddenly more workers, more innovation, …) or disadvantage (suddenly building becomes harder, more social friction between very different “people”, …), changing the global balance of power.
Consequences of communication with ant colonies. [8]
These things presumably think in a way entirely different from ours. They will be a wonderful source of fresh ideas and perspectives. There will be new inventions, new scientific theories, and the like (but with some lag time; we will need to explain to the any colonies what problems we are interested in).
Facilitating such communication will therefore be valuable, and there will be people and organizations doing it for money. A whole new profession! (Probably one of many.)
I bet there would be at least one new religion, maybe derived from whatever ideas the ant colonies have that seem most mysterious to us, maybe regarding the colonies themselves as a sign from the gods or something.
There would also be political and social movements inspired by the ants.
If ant colonies are intelligent, perhaps they have (all of a sudden!) art forms. Their art might be beautiful to us, somehow, but even if not it might become very valuable (as a way of signalling one’s up-to-date-ness and open-mindedness, or just because of scarcity), leading no doubt to much controversy and excitement among those who follow such things.
Some people would fall in love with ant colonies, want to marry them, etc.
Some people would want to be ant colonies, ask to be given the same legal status as an ant colony, etc. I suspect they would get about as much respect as furries do at present, but their existence would have some cultural impact.
If an ant colony is, overall, about as intelligent as an average human, I bet that means that it’s much smarter in some ways and much dimmer in others. This means that collaboration between humans and ants might be super-effective, with each filling in some of the other’s blind spots. Expect human-ant joint ventures to do wonderful things.
Bullshit. [3]
There would be a flood of books and the like by people claiming to have found brilliant new insights from the ants’ novel thinking patterns, but who had in fact neither had any original ideas nor derived anything genuinely new from the ant colonies.
There would be a flood of books and the like claiming to convey specific messages from the ants, whose authors had in fact never received any such messages or had badly misunderstood them.
There would be a flood of books and the like by people claiming to have found brilliant new insights from the existence of intelligent ant colonies, but who in fact (etc., etc.).
Extrapolation. [2]
If an ant colony of a million ants is about as clever as an average human being, what about a colony of ten million ants? What happens if you bring two intelligent colonies together and encourage their ants to mingle a bit? Can you use the fact that smaller colonies aren’t intelligent to conduct some sort of breeding-for-smarts programme without being viewed as a moral monster? Maybe we can bootstrap a superintelligence. (The possible consequences of that, good and bad, are endless, but I don’t think listing them is on topic here.)
Ants don’t appear to move or think very fast. Maybe we can simulate an intelligent ant colony (without much need to understand what it’s doing above the level of individual ants) well enough to get something of roughly human-level intelligence—but running hundreds of times faster, or more. This is a pretty weak kind of superintelligence, but still potentially able to change the world.
Things ant colonies could do better or differently. [4]
Perhaps an intelligent ant colony can observe the world in ways that are difficult for a human being, by sending ants to investigate particular things. If so, they would probably open up new means of espionage, structural inspection of buildings, and so forth. I’m not sure how world-shaking this would be; probably not very.
Some varieties of petty crime would be easier for ant colonies. A million coordinated ants could probably kill a person (lots of stings, crawl into orifices and block breathing, etc.) and might then be able to retreat leaving less obvious sign of who did it than a human could. (I assume they’ve got some way of getting around in human spaces. Some sort of colony-on-wheels, perhaps; see below for a bit more on this.)
Ant colonies might be able (and willing, if given suitable incentives) to perform some kinds of highly intricate craftwork that humans can’t practically do. (Consider e.g. leaf-cutter ants. They can probably work on paper as well as on leaves.) This isn’t necessarily any better than what humans can make machines do, but for art/craft purposes “made by intelligent ant colonies” may be more appealing than “made by a 3D printer”. So expect some new artforms even if the ant colonies themselves don’t have art that interests us.
Ant-colony communication might well be very difficult for humans to intercept, providing new means of covert communication for criminals, intelligence agencies, etc.
New things ant colonies might do having gained intelligence. [3]
They would want to be able to move around more effectively, interact with humans more naturally, etc. Someone, somehow, would figure out ways to do this (even if only because some humans would benefit from easier access to the ant colonies). Maybe antmobiles and the like would become a big area of business. (Or several. Antmobiles and ant-internet, for instance, might both be a big deal, but I doubt they’d have much in common.)
Some would want to learn from us. At least some schools, universities, etc., would probably be willing. I’ve no idea how that would work, but maybe some university lectures would start having simultaneous translation into Antish.
Many would want to move from the locations where they formed to some place with other ant colonies they could interact with. Perhaps there would be ant-colony suburbs or ant-colony villages.
Other. [13]
Many religions would have some radical rethinking to do. Expect reforms, schisms, new branches of theology, etc.
Also, expect (probably hopeless) attempts at proselytization among the ant colonies.
Religions that already took insects seriously might suddenly get a lot of new converts. (Jainism is the obvious example.)
Quite aside from systematic attempts to wipe out ant colonies, there are plenty of humans already trying to kill ants. If some of those ants suddenly become parts of intelligent colonies, a lot of the humans presumably won’t have any idea that’s happened. But the colonies will probably figure out what’s what. Expect a lot of cases where humans are badly harmed or killed (in self-defence) by ant colonies, until we manage to get all the humans and all the ant colonies informed about the situation. Which will probably take a while.
Maybe also expect a wave of suicides, religious conversions, nervous breakdowns, etc., from people who have wiped out a lot of ants before discovering that ant colonies can be intelligent, and are now overwhelmed with guilt.
If ant colonies gained any sort of legal protection, then building on land occupied by intelligent ant colonies or maybe even building on land that might be occupied by intelligent ant colonies would likely become illegal. (Unless you relocated the ants. But they might not be any more willing to move than humans usually are.) Depending on exactly what collections of ants are intelligent, and how confident we are about that, this could make new building hugely more difficult. Hence: more expensive housing and commercial rents, less expansion of cities into suburbs, etc.
If ant colonies are intelligent, how can we be sure that collections of termites, bees, locusts, etc., aren’t too? It might suddenly become much more difficult to deal with these pests, for fear that we might be committing murder.
I assume there are ecosystems in which ants form an important part. Including, e.g., as food for other animals. If enough of the ants are suddenly parts of intelligent colonies, which presumably can find ways of avoiding too many of their number becoming dinner, those ecosystems could be radically changed, which could ultimately lead to dramatic consequences such as extinctions.
In some cases we may intervene to stop intelligent ant colonies being badly damaged by predators. Expect increased sales of products that kill ant predators.
Whatever individual (or research group) discovered that ant colonies are intelligent would instantly be famous, presumably get a Nobel prize, etc. (Does this count as the world changing? It would certainly change their world.)
Widespread concern about having one’s house or office infiltrated by ants belonging to colonies working for one’s enemies/rivals/government/insurers/… would lead to major changes in how buildings are designed, with attention to keeping out unwanted ants more rigorously.
If intelligent ant colonies can use the internet, own things, etc., then they will need to be able to identify themselves. Maybe this will just be a matter of passwords or something, but I think more likely new recognition and authentication technologies will be developed as a result.
Extinction of everything valuable in human civilization (as the result of massive nuclear war, global pandemic, etc.) just got somewhat less likely. Most things that wipe us out don’t wipe out the ants too, and presumably after a while the ants will have records of a lot of what we have done.
(This text is just there so that actual content isn’t in the preview.)
New research programmes. This discovery would give rise to a lot of them. I don’t think listing different ones is unreasonable here, so here are some: [7]
Careful examination of the colonies themselves. What algorithms are they executing? What are the communication mechanisms? Is there discernible structure? How does it work?
Attempts to use similar mechanisms in silico. Just as biological neurons inspired neural networks, there would be many attempts to model computer systems on (simplifications of) ant colonies.
Investigation into what changed. Did it affect widely separated colonies at the same time? (This would suggest divine intervention, Sheldrake-style morphic resonance, etc.) Did it spread from colony to colony, and if so how? Whatever the cause, is it something we can somehow apply to other systems, or apply multiple times to one colony for extra intelligence? Does it suggest that some single change can make other complex but unintelligent systems become intelligent?
Biological examination of the individual ants. What’s the nature of the communication etc. that they do? Are there interesting differences between the ants in smarter versus dimmer colonies?
Maybe there’d be a shakeup in philosophy of mind. E.g., anyone who thinks that for some reason real thinking can only happen in human brains, or in things that somehow share structure or materials with human brains, now has an actual concrete counterexample. All those thought experiments about replacing neurons one by one have counterparts involving replacing ants one by one, and maybe that can even actually be done.
Do intelligent ant colonies communicate with one another? If so, how? Do we need to rewrite everything in linguistics?
Ant-thropology. Are there ant-colony societies? (Maybe not at first, if they only just gained sentience. So maybe we get to observe societies forming from scratch, which could be super-exciting.)
Changes in individual humans’ thinking, arising from knowing about intelligent ant colonies. [2]
At the moment, most people—even e.g. vegetarians—don’t much mind harming or killing insects. If an insect might be a vital part of an intelligent system, maybe that changes.
If there is a whole nother intelligent species out there, maybe that makes other humans seem more like us than before. Perhaps racism, sexism, etc. would reduce.
Political and quasi-political consequences. [8]
It’s not clear to me whether nations should consider their intelligent ant colonies people and/or citizens, but I bet some people would be very insistent that they should and other people would be very insistent that they shouldn’t. (Perhaps sincerely, perhaps because of perceived political gain or loss.) The rights and welfare of intelligent ant colonies would inevitably become a politically sensitive topic. In countries with strong political polarization, presumably particular views on ant colonies would become part of the major political coalitions’ idea-clusters, which in turn might result in some realignment as people with strong opinions on ants move from one coalition to another.
If ant colonies gained any sort of rights or protections, a lot of people would resent that. (”… coming here, taking our lawns, …”) This might spawn a new sort of angry populism, blaming all the world’s troubles on the ants.
Conversely, the ant colonies would provide an exciting new metaphor for extremists to use about humans they didn’t like (people with the wrong colour of skin, the wrong religion, the wrong parentage, etc.).
Legal changes to give ant colonies rights and responsibilities would be a big deal in themselves and might have interesting side effects (e.g., if it were done by broadening the definition of “person”, then maybe some other things besides humans and ant colonies would suddenly qualify).
If in any places ant colonies gained the right to vote, or other access to political power or leverage, there could be major shifts in the balance of power (even among humans).
Perhaps in some places humans would try to wipe out ant colonies, seeing them as rival claimants to the land or something. It’s not clear to me how straightforward this would be. If straightforward, the main (local) consequence would be that some would see these people as heroes while others would see them as mass-murderers; perhaps the debate might resemble ones about abortion. If not straightforward, though, the consequences might be more interesting. War between humans and ant colonies? (One can imagine the ant colonies having some interesting ways of striking back.) Drastic anti-ant measures with knock-on consequences for other humans, other animals, the environment, perhaps.
If the ant colonies turned out to be better at defending themselves than one would immediately expect, at some point we might end up with humans living under ant-colony rulers. I for one would welcome our new insect overlords. (This seems a really unlikely outcome, because we have technology and presumably they don’t. But perhaps that might change as rapidly as their intelligence did, somehow.)
Ants live more readily in some parts of the world than others. Places with more ant colonies might be at a substantial economic advantage (suddenly more workers, more innovation, …) or disadvantage (suddenly building becomes harder, more social friction between very different “people”, …), changing the global balance of power.
Consequences of communication with ant colonies. [8]
These things presumably think in a way entirely different from ours. They will be a wonderful source of fresh ideas and perspectives. There will be new inventions, new scientific theories, and the like (but with some lag time; we will need to explain to the any colonies what problems we are interested in).
Facilitating such communication will therefore be valuable, and there will be people and organizations doing it for money. A whole new profession! (Probably one of many.)
I bet there would be at least one new religion, maybe derived from whatever ideas the ant colonies have that seem most mysterious to us, maybe regarding the colonies themselves as a sign from the gods or something.
There would also be political and social movements inspired by the ants.
If ant colonies are intelligent, perhaps they have (all of a sudden!) art forms. Their art might be beautiful to us, somehow, but even if not it might become very valuable (as a way of signalling one’s up-to-date-ness and open-mindedness, or just because of scarcity), leading no doubt to much controversy and excitement among those who follow such things.
Some people would fall in love with ant colonies, want to marry them, etc.
Some people would want to be ant colonies, ask to be given the same legal status as an ant colony, etc. I suspect they would get about as much respect as furries do at present, but their existence would have some cultural impact.
If an ant colony is, overall, about as intelligent as an average human, I bet that means that it’s much smarter in some ways and much dimmer in others. This means that collaboration between humans and ants might be super-effective, with each filling in some of the other’s blind spots. Expect human-ant joint ventures to do wonderful things.
Bullshit. [3]
There would be a flood of books and the like by people claiming to have found brilliant new insights from the ants’ novel thinking patterns, but who had in fact neither had any original ideas nor derived anything genuinely new from the ant colonies.
There would be a flood of books and the like claiming to convey specific messages from the ants, whose authors had in fact never received any such messages or had badly misunderstood them.
There would be a flood of books and the like by people claiming to have found brilliant new insights from the existence of intelligent ant colonies, but who in fact (etc., etc.).
Extrapolation. [2]
If an ant colony of a million ants is about as clever as an average human being, what about a colony of ten million ants? What happens if you bring two intelligent colonies together and encourage their ants to mingle a bit? Can you use the fact that smaller colonies aren’t intelligent to conduct some sort of breeding-for-smarts programme without being viewed as a moral monster? Maybe we can bootstrap a superintelligence. (The possible consequences of that, good and bad, are endless, but I don’t think listing them is on topic here.)
Ants don’t appear to move or think very fast. Maybe we can simulate an intelligent ant colony (without much need to understand what it’s doing above the level of individual ants) well enough to get something of roughly human-level intelligence—but running hundreds of times faster, or more. This is a pretty weak kind of superintelligence, but still potentially able to change the world.
Things ant colonies could do better or differently. [4]
Perhaps an intelligent ant colony can observe the world in ways that are difficult for a human being, by sending ants to investigate particular things. If so, they would probably open up new means of espionage, structural inspection of buildings, and so forth. I’m not sure how world-shaking this would be; probably not very.
Some varieties of petty crime would be easier for ant colonies. A million coordinated ants could probably kill a person (lots of stings, crawl into orifices and block breathing, etc.) and might then be able to retreat leaving less obvious sign of who did it than a human could. (I assume they’ve got some way of getting around in human spaces. Some sort of colony-on-wheels, perhaps; see below for a bit more on this.)
Ant colonies might be able (and willing, if given suitable incentives) to perform some kinds of highly intricate craftwork that humans can’t practically do. (Consider e.g. leaf-cutter ants. They can probably work on paper as well as on leaves.) This isn’t necessarily any better than what humans can make machines do, but for art/craft purposes “made by intelligent ant colonies” may be more appealing than “made by a 3D printer”. So expect some new artforms even if the ant colonies themselves don’t have art that interests us.
Ant-colony communication might well be very difficult for humans to intercept, providing new means of covert communication for criminals, intelligence agencies, etc.
New things ant colonies might do having gained intelligence. [3]
They would want to be able to move around more effectively, interact with humans more naturally, etc. Someone, somehow, would figure out ways to do this (even if only because some humans would benefit from easier access to the ant colonies). Maybe antmobiles and the like would become a big area of business. (Or several. Antmobiles and ant-internet, for instance, might both be a big deal, but I doubt they’d have much in common.)
Some would want to learn from us. At least some schools, universities, etc., would probably be willing. I’ve no idea how that would work, but maybe some university lectures would start having simultaneous translation into Antish.
Many would want to move from the locations where they formed to some place with other ant colonies they could interact with. Perhaps there would be ant-colony suburbs or ant-colony villages.
Other. [13]
Many religions would have some radical rethinking to do. Expect reforms, schisms, new branches of theology, etc.
Also, expect (probably hopeless) attempts at proselytization among the ant colonies.
Religions that already took insects seriously might suddenly get a lot of new converts. (Jainism is the obvious example.)
Quite aside from systematic attempts to wipe out ant colonies, there are plenty of humans already trying to kill ants. If some of those ants suddenly become parts of intelligent colonies, a lot of the humans presumably won’t have any idea that’s happened. But the colonies will probably figure out what’s what. Expect a lot of cases where humans are badly harmed or killed (in self-defence) by ant colonies, until we manage to get all the humans and all the ant colonies informed about the situation. Which will probably take a while.
Maybe also expect a wave of suicides, religious conversions, nervous breakdowns, etc., from people who have wiped out a lot of ants before discovering that ant colonies can be intelligent, and are now overwhelmed with guilt.
If ant colonies gained any sort of legal protection, then building on land occupied by intelligent ant colonies or maybe even building on land that might be occupied by intelligent ant colonies would likely become illegal. (Unless you relocated the ants. But they might not be any more willing to move than humans usually are.) Depending on exactly what collections of ants are intelligent, and how confident we are about that, this could make new building hugely more difficult. Hence: more expensive housing and commercial rents, less expansion of cities into suburbs, etc.
If ant colonies are intelligent, how can we be sure that collections of termites, bees, locusts, etc., aren’t too? It might suddenly become much more difficult to deal with these pests, for fear that we might be committing murder.
I assume there are ecosystems in which ants form an important part. Including, e.g., as food for other animals. If enough of the ants are suddenly parts of intelligent colonies, which presumably can find ways of avoiding too many of their number becoming dinner, those ecosystems could be radically changed, which could ultimately lead to dramatic consequences such as extinctions.
In some cases we may intervene to stop intelligent ant colonies being badly damaged by predators. Expect increased sales of products that kill ant predators.
Whatever individual (or research group) discovered that ant colonies are intelligent would instantly be famous, presumably get a Nobel prize, etc. (Does this count as the world changing? It would certainly change their world.)
Widespread concern about having one’s house or office infiltrated by ants belonging to colonies working for one’s enemies/rivals/government/insurers/… would lead to major changes in how buildings are designed, with attention to keeping out unwanted ants more rigorously.
If intelligent ant colonies can use the internet, own things, etc., then they will need to be able to identify themselves. Maybe this will just be a matter of passwords or something, but I think more likely new recognition and authentication technologies will be developed as a result.
Extinction of everything valuable in human civilization (as the result of massive nuclear war, global pandemic, etc.) just got somewhat less likely. Most things that wipe us out don’t wipe out the ants too, and presumably after a while the ants will have records of a lot of what we have done.
Ah, so many great ones. Tactically, #1.3 seems crucial and I really should have thought about it!