Ants that have intelligence anywhere near the level needed for meaningful trade with us would likely cause our extinction. We don’t trade with ants mainly because they’re too stupid to do anything we want, despite being physically capable of doing plenty of things we might want.
If you scale up their intelligence to the level where they’re worthwhile trading with, there are stories you can tell about how beneficial trade would be between our species, but frankly I don’t think that we would be of much benefit to them[1].
Ants that have intelligence anywhere near the level needed for meaningful trade with us would likely cause our extinction. We don’t trade with ants mainly because they’re too stupid to do anything we want, despite being physically capable of doing plenty of things we might want.
If you scale up their intelligence to the level where they’re worthwhile trading with, there are stories you can tell about how beneficial trade would be between our species, but frankly I don’t think that we would be of much benefit to them[1].
Them! was a 1950′s movie about giant mutated ants. Even as a child I thought that quadrillions of tiny intelligent ants would be a far worse threat.