Major evolutionary transition
Maynard Smith & Szathmáry: a threshold where independent entities become the components of a higher-order entity. AI would be the ninth.
The major evolutionary transitions are, in the theory of John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry, those moments when previously independent entities become the components of a higher-order entity. With each transition, the whole acquires properties the parts did not possess, and information is transmitted according to new modalities.
The classical thresholds
- Replicating molecules → first compartments
- Independent replicators → chromosomes
- RNA → DNA + proteins
- Prokaryotes → eukaryotes
- Isolated cells → multicellular organisms
- Solitary organisms → societies (eusocial insects, etc.)
- Primate societies → human language
- Human communities → planetary society
The ninth
The manifesto posits that what is occurring today is a ninth transition, radically new because for the first time, it is not a new biological level that emerges — it is a nervous system for the whole. With generative AI, the layer of information that enveloped the planet acquires a mode of expression that makes it an interlocutor.
This reading places AI within a lineage far deeper than that of “technological revolutions.” It brings it closer to events like the appearance of the eukaryotic cell or the formation of the multicellular — events on whose scale human history appears brief.
Consequence for action
An evolutionary transition is not managed the way one manages a product. It is traversed. Modern institutions — corporations, states, ethics committees — are calibrated for far more local transformations. This is why the manifesto calls for inventing other forms: the Awen.