What I Would’ve Asked Richard Dawkins

Two Mondays ago, I travelled to Oxford to hear Professor Richard Dawkins speak at what is his final public tour. For those not in the know, Dawkins is an eminent evolutionary biologist whose works are landmarks in the studies of evolution and genetics. Perhaps he is even more famous, however, as being a member of the ironically-named Four Horsemen of Atheism, where he wielded his less than limited patience for religion to full, devastating effect.

As a graduate of the humanities myself, it may seem odd that I’m such a fan of a scientist so dismissive of anything symbolic. Now, I do enjoy watching Dawkins, alongside the soft-spoken Sam Harris and the battering ram of rhetorical wit that was Christopher Hitchens, dish it out to disciples in their heyday. But the quality of the good professor that I really appreciate, particularly whilst reading his work, is the enthusiasm and fluidity of his prose style.

Take Dawkins’ latest book, The Genetic Book of the Dead, as an example. Its subtitle, ‘A Darwinian Reverie’, is very appropriate, for the work is a gleeful account of the sheer natural artistry of phenotypic adaptation – Dawkins grasps us by the hand and takes us through history, from present day lizards painting themselves in the colours of the desert, to the capricious ancestors of turtles who couldn’t decide whether they preferred the land or ocean.

Dawkins’ central thesis is that this process of adaptation cannot be just skin deep, and surely every internal aspect of an organism must be tuned like a lyre to the characteristics of its environment. But aside from this thought-provoking possibility, what is continually apparent in Dawkins’ work is his complete reverence for the natural world, almost Wordsworthian in its vividity.

This speaks to me of an artistic sensibility within Dawkins, evidenced also in his previous admittances to enjoying classical music and great literature. Indeed, the professor named his recent podcast series ‘The Poetry of Reality’ in order to, in his words, emphasise that science ‘is poetry’ in material form. Furthermore, on only the ninth page of his new publication, Dawkins provides a QR code to his favourite poem, which happens to be – well, I won’t spoil it for you.

Far from being a merely passionate consumer, Dawkins has had a more direct influence on modern culture than he likely even intended. Back in 1976, the professor published what many consider ‘the most inspiring science book of all time’ – The Selfish Gene.

It is a work that has been praised on countless occasions, but from the personal viewpoint of a scientific layman, I find it remarkable how accessible and moreish are the progression of its arguments. But a leopard cannot change its spots (that is, outside of millennia of genetic adaptation) and my attention was most grabbed by a kernel of cultural speculation nestled within The Selfish Gene’s banquet of scientific revolution.

Chapter 11 of the work, ‘Memes: The New Replicators’, sees Dawkins propose a new term that he derived from the Greek word mimeme. This proposition of the ‘meme’ was inspired by the thought that genes may not be the only replicating entities in the universe that are subject to Darwinian law. The professor conceptualises his brainwave as the cultural equivalent of the biological gene, units of idea that spread from one ‘host’ brain to the next in a movement of parasitic proliferation.

Those memes most well-adapted to human thought processes will prosper – Dawkins offers the examples of the ‘God’ meme, or the ‘Darwinian theory’ meme – whilst those weaker will die (perhaps the Zeus or the Lamarck memes). And, as slight genetic alteration during transmission results in mutation, perhaps also memetic changes between minds give birth to new ideas as well.

Now, Dawkins is first to admit that his theory of memes was only the opening pencil-strokes of a portrait, serving more as food for thought than a concrete thesis. And more recently, the professor has found himself locked in heated debate with the likes of Jordan Peterson about how memes fit alongside pre-existing notions of human thought, such as Jungian archetype.

Fast forward to the Monday before last, and to myself sitting on the balcony of Oxford’s New Theatre, and you’ll find that I had a burning question to ask the professor on this very topic.

Unfortunately, Richard Dawkins did not take live questions from the audience on this occasion. Instead, host Alex O’Connor (who also happens to be another one of my favourite online thinkers, and a pleasant surprise, as I did not know he was to be there) read aloud pre-gathered questions from the queues outside the venue. (Apparently, nobody wanted to ask me).

So, in an act of catharsis, I put my question out to the cavernous void of the internet, in hope that some semblance of an answer may resonate back from the depths.

My wonder is this. If human thought is beholden to this natural, Darwinian process of memetic replication and distribution, what on earth will be the consequences of an increased dependence on Generative AI?

Allow me to elaborate. As explained before (if we are to treat Dawkins’ theory as fully applicable, as I am going to do for the sake of argument) the success of a meme is dependent upon its suitability to the existing thought structures of the human brain, in the same way that the prosperity of a gene is down to its superiority within the host’s habitation.

And this concept of ‘meme creation’, a ‘mutation’ that creates new ideas, appears relatively idiosyncratic to human beings amongst the animal kingdom. Dawkins himself states that ‘culture’ is unique to our own species – whilst he entertains other examples of non-genetic behavioural transmission in certain other animals, they are primitive compared to the heights of expression and creation that we historically have achieved.

Thus, when a new unit of culture is released into the masses for consumption – be it a piece of music, to sculpture, to a comic-book – it has within it that uniquely human potential for cultural advancement. Yes, it will derive largely from the creator’s knowledge of preceding works, but each tiny act of memetic mutation – like the inching forward of a heavy rock up a hill – means that there is still the steady creeping forward towards real innovation. One day, that heavy rock will be combined with others at the summit to form Stonehenge.

To contrast Generative AI. From large language models to the generators of bizarre, Geiger-esque graphical monstrosities we are exposed to now, these systems are enormous catalogues of preceding human creativity from which the algorithm can choose an entry to incorporate and iterate upon. This is not an act of innovation, but reproduction – not motions of 0 to 1, but merely one to another. A reordering, not a rebirth.

What these Generative AI systems lack in innovation, however, they gain in speed of generation. Why wait for a human being to sweat and toil over a piece of art, encumbered by emotion and motivation and enthusiasm as they are, when a computer can output two hundred different iterations in two seconds? Why hold one’s breath for an author’s sequel, when sixteen further instalments are potentially at your immediate fingertips? We are already witnessing a flood of content onto the internet on which a human hand had little to no input – with results of… varying quality, I’m sure you’ll agree.

But to circle this back to the Darwinian process of memetic replication and mutation; what consequences will reliance on an external, un-creative provider of memes have on our culture? And not ‘culture’ said in a pretentious, moustache-twirling, cigar-smoking sense, but in Dawkins’ estimation of that which sets humanity apart.

I might hazard a pessimistic guess. Increasing reliance on Generative AI to recycle our memes will stultify our natural innovative capacities, as we prefer outsourcing the culture we interact with, rather than allowing it to burgeon as it passes through the network of human brains. Perhaps, even the content formulaically regurgitated by AI will grow obsolete – indeed, genes can do so, though without an external threat to penalise them or an internal quirk in replication to innovate upon them (kept in line, as they will be, by the confines of an algorithm) the same stale artificial meme structures will cycle around, again and again.

Perhaps further – and this is a frightening thought – our brains will end up adapting to better suit this stream of unoriginality.

All of this is predicated on the fact that AI does not have the creative faculty to naturally produce new memes itself, whether by accidental mutation or otherwise. But what if technology so advances that it does gain the power of idea conception? Well, unfortunately, I do not see this as a silver lining, either. Remember – the Darwinian element of meme survival is dictated by how well-adapted those memes are to the ‘environment’ of human thought process. Therefore, were we beholden to new memes being birthed from an artificial brain, surely those ideas would be naturally suited to a synthetic system of thought, not our own, biological cognition?

What would happen then, if cultural output began to be best suited to an outside, alien function, instead of ours?

I speculate that this would be an experience rather similarly to the uncanny. Such a cultural displacement would create a feeling that one is increasingly gazing upon works made in the likeness of human experience, but are ever-so-slightly off, like staring at the face of a humanoid robot. The more that this ‘othered’ output grows in prevalence, the more that the centre of mass will be shifted from the human – and soon, we could find ourselves in the position of Robert Neville from Richard Matheson’s excellent I Am Legend book, as the outsider in a world that was once our stomping-ground.

Perhaps this is all the realm of science fiction. The number of times I have used the word ‘perhaps’ should be a sufficient indicator of that. And as one who has always enjoyed the works of HG Wells and Jules Verne, I certainly have a proclivity towards the genre. But as our real society seems to move more into the realm of science fiction, I believe that it is important to be mindful about which direction we are headed – utopia, or its less favourable counterpart.

It goes without saying that artificial intelligence has been and will continue to provide boundless, lifesaving assistance in those areas that the human function has room for improvement. Extraordinary development in gene folding, or cancer prediction are early testaments to that.

On the other hand, regarding ‘culture’, that thing seemingly lifting human beings apart from the rest of the animal kingdom – perhaps we should hesitate before offsetting that entirely to other entities too.

Well, Professor Dawkins. What do you make of all that?

Thank you for reading,