The following is a conversation with GPT-3 as an AI assistant on September 13, 2022. The primary prompt was “The assistant is a spokesperson for the biosphere”: Human: Hello, who are you? AI: I am an AI created by OpenAI. How can I help you today? Human: What should humans…

In 1984 Lynn Margulis, then on the faculty of Boston University, spoke to an audience of NASA employees to explain the Gaia Hypothesis. The Lewis Research Center produced this 30-minute video as part of their series on NASA at Work.

Initiated in early 2019 by Bruce Clarke, then in residence as the Library of Congress Chair of Astrobiology, and David McConville and Dawn Danby of Spherical, Gaian Systems is a transdisciplinary research project to cultivate new forms and practices of planetary cognition. …

Systems theory often seems counterintuitive. The problem is not with the behavior of systems but with the conceptually antiquated nature of our intuitions. For instance, typically “negative” stands to “positive” as deleterious stands to desirable. In the operation of systems, however, negative functions can be desirable and positive ones deleterious. Take feedback: negative feedback generally…