September 2, 2026: Salus Forum

Howard

I wish I had a succinct answer for you there, but I think right now, it’s the leaders being able to understand what the real potential in the future is, because there’s some things that are happening now that are certainly wonderful and helping everyone become discerning in terms of writing. Being certain that what you read isn’t written by AI. It looks like AI has all the foibles of human writing, as it should. AI has helped us define how much of what it produces is valuable to humankind and where the limitations are. Probably the biggest challenge is to contain and regulate AI for valuable purposes to benefit humankind. And the differentiation may be between humankind and corporate profit sometimes. Maybe it’s between humankind and individual greed or desire for control. Whatever those motives are, we must be able to well define what is the human benefit. We’ve seen over the millennium, many wonderful transitions of humankind, from the Stone Age to iron, to the wheel, to fire, to Gutenberg’s press and on and on, all of which you can say brought about measurable improvements to humankind. The question is, does AI, does that bring the same thing, or is it one innovation that we need to lead carefully and be able to manage and control? So, that’s my only thought on that. I don’t have an answer, but I do have a concern.

Bill G

I think the issue of AI is not where it’s going, it’s where it might be right now. We don’t have any idea where it’s going. We are completely confused about where it’s going, whether it’ll be positive, negative, or somewhere in between. It requires us to completely know where it is going right now. That’s part of the stress that we’re feeling.

Bill B

So, that’s the notion of hard emergence. Hard, unpredictable. In many ways, AI has something awesome about it. It’s big, it’s frightening, it’s intriguing, and it can be easily overwhelming.

Howard, I think you’re talking about how, in the midst of that awesomeness, do you engage in some discernment? How do you do some sorting? How do you do some careful thinking, rather than just say, oh. Well.

Jeremy

I guess we could ask ourselves, are social movements murmurations or stampedes? I guess it depends on if you’re standing in front.

Jack

Jeremy, I’m going to jump in and stop you there. It’s not whether you’re standing in front of it. It’s how they are developed and how they emerge. That’s this whole emergent piece, is how do those come together? Are they forced, and are they reactive individuals like a stampede? Bill B made an allusion to the start of a stampede. I grew up in a rural community, and over the 50 years that I’ve been associated with the communities there have been a couple of deaths and more than a couple of injuries from cattle stampedes, mostly just stupid old cows. The difference with regard to a murmuration is that within a few seconds it appears that the cows are all running in the same direction.

As you said, the stampede has been used for herding buffalo off of a cliff for 10,000 years. We have stone evidence of that. But those bison were never working together.

They were always individually running from the threat, as opposed to the birds. We don’t understand the biology of birds flocking. We understand some of the math, although we’ve not been able to mathematically model all of it. The birds are moving in a way that every member is equally influential, except for the injured ones. Those birds that are healthy all function equally in the movement. How is it organized? I think we should aim for the murmuration. The individuals within that flock or swarm or school of fish are working equally to organize the appearance of coordination.