Our species' collective intelligence isn't that simple. It appears to me that we are processing substrate for a species-sized game of Core Wars. In turn, becau

Our species' collective intelligence isn't that simple. It appears to me that we are processing substrate for a species-sized game of Core Wars. In turn, because the size of the playing field (aka total human population) has become so large, the outcomes of the game now can produce existential threats, something amplified by the speed at which everything runs. When there were only 200 million humans, communicating by voice and using only muscle power, the ultimate impact of slow AIs running on Homo Sapiens hardware was bounded. Now, closing in on 8 billion of us with considerable upgrades in the form of industrial- and information-age technology, the output of the game can not just break the board, but flip the table.