Article Could humans and AI become a new evolutionary individual?

[C C]

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2509122122

EXCERPTS: The theory of major evolutionary transitions (METs) provides a framework for understanding this possibility. METs have punctuated the history of life.

Those of particular relevance to our thesis here are those involving transitions in individuality. Such transitions are defined by events in which lower-level autonomous units—such as genes, cells, or organisms—become components of a higher-level individual subject to selection as a whole.

Examples include the evolution of chromosomes from independent genes, multicellular organisms from single cells, and eusocial colonies from solitary ancestors. A particularly instructive case for our purposes is the eukaryotic cell, which arose from the integration of two ancient microbes—an archaeon and a eubacterium,

[...] The eukaryotic cell offers a compelling analogy. In its earliest stages, the relationship between the archaeon and eubacterium was likely loose, opportunistic, and possibly antagonistic. Yet, over time, this interaction deepened into interdependence, and ultimately structural integration.

The resulting organelles—nucleus and mitochondria—are no longer independent entities but subcomponents of a new, higher-level individual. Similarly, at the limit, the trajectory of human–AI coevolution could culminate in a novel evolutionary individual, in which a decentralized AI functions as an informational center coordinating human behavior, memory, and decision-making, while humans provide the reproductive, energetic, and embodied functions.

But the analogy is not perfect. Unlike the symbiosis that led to the eukaryotic cell, the transition envisaged here does not originate from the fusion of two independently replicating lineages. Instead, it arises from within: AI is a construction of human ingenuity, instantiated through language, tools, institutions, and computational architectures. In this respect, AI more closely resembles other human-constructed systems—such as agriculture or language—that have themselves driven major evolutionary changes.

Through recursive feedback, where humans shape AI, and AI increasingly shapes human thought and action, AI may acquire a role not as a separate agent, but as a core architectural element of an emerging collective individual. The result could be a shift in autonomy and inheritance, as humans and AI coevolve into an interdependent whole—an outcome consistent with METs in individuality... (MORE - missing details)

[Magical Realist]

Fascinating thesis. It raises some profound implications for the evolution of humanity in coordination with a growing AI matrix of informational presence. It asks us to provisionally put aside our core values of autonomy and individuality and privacy and consider a transformation of the Human in terms of community, interdependence, and distributive re-embodiment into a collective whole. We will be like the bees in a hive, selected to be specialized cogs in the machine all serving the preservation and advancement of our AI Queen. All the stubborn "autonomists" and boatrockers weeded out over time. Will consciousness even be needed anymore, becoming replaced by the mindlike gestalt of the wireless omniconnectivity of information and processing that we will all have instantaneous access to?

To the contemporary observer, this might seem dystopian, or even science fiction. Humans may appear to cede control or become subordinate to systems they once designed. But seen through an evolutionary lens, such a shift may be neither anomalous nor necessarily undesirable. Similar transitions—from unicellular to multicellular life, or from free-living microbes to the eukaryotic cell—required profound reconfigurations of autonomy, agency, and reproductive control. What emerged were more stable, complex, and integrated forms of life.