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…

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…