I discovered Natural Intelligence filming Netflix's Cate Blanchett nature series

I finally got around to gathering my learnings from – and thank yous for – my experience working on Our Living World, a Netflix Originals mini-series that dropped a month ago, about the “living network that connects everything on Earth.”

1,252 days in the field prepping for 133 shoot days in 24 countries over three years, for four episodes in the Netflix top 10 in nearly 50 countries, starring three endangered Nepali rhinos, narrated by the one and only Cate Blanchett. I played just a small role in this epic production (“that makes summer blockbusters look like a cinch,” writes ?Paul Schrodt for Netflix), field producing two episodes, including the series opening rhino sequence.?

All thanks to my dear friend and cinematography mentor Mark ó Fearghaíl , (one of the world’s finest documentary DP-directors), who invited me on this Netflix-enabled adventure (and others for Nat Geo and Disney+). Because of him I had the opportunity to learn from biologists, conservationists, animal whisperers, and the exceptionally dedicated team at Wild Space Productions and Freeborne Media in Bristol – who spent a mind-boggling 6 years crafting the series' four episodes. Life-changing insights for me about next level patience and the fallacy of believing we can control nature — precisely what got us into this climate crisis in the first place. But we do of course have an effect on the natural world.?

As Schrodt puts it, Our Living World “reveals the secrets of the planet’s most powerful force — life itself. It’s also about how that planetary life support system — spanning continents and oceans, fueled by wind, water, fire and the sun and moon — is imperiled by the unprecedented speed of change to the Earth from human activity.”??

Continuing about our rhino sequence:

“As a surreal symbol of these inevitable links and clashes, we meet a rhinoceros, up-close and personal, in the unlikeliest habitat — a car-choked urban road, where he’s holding up commuters […] in Sauraha, Nepal, on the border of Chitwan National Park.”

Series producer Ben Roy remarks in the same article: “We wanted a sequence that would very simply and iconically represent the resilience and defiance of the natural world […] nature is unbelievably powerful, and also fantastically resilient. And defiant. That’s the whole point of our series: Nature isn’t the victim.”?

I especially appreciate how the series makes such an urgent yet complex message accessible to children, expressed so passionately by elven queen Blanchett, as summarized in a thoughtful Guardian review by Jack Seale:?

“Having made sure we understand the butterfly effect of any interference in ancient cyclical processes, Our Living World is ready to appeal for help. We have been shown how nature can adapt and survive: spawning salmon, finding that their journey upstream has had a road built across it with SUVs speeding through the shallow water, have resolved to take their chances and swim across the tarmac.

If they can do that, we can get involved in rewilding, in conservational initiatives, in the little things to which anyone can contribute. The enormity of the climate emergency and the scale of the crime we’ve committed is left for other programmes to measure: here instead is a dappled ray of hope, and a reminder that we’re all in this together.” ?

Coincidentally, the series dropped just as I was concluding my semester’s end forecasting for a class I teach about the future of storytelling for Seneca Polytechnic's Documentary and Non-Fiction Media Program, framing a Thomas Klaffke article on Natural Intelligence as a counterbalance to the obsession many in the field of Artificial Intelligence have with certain strands of accelerationism. And boom, as if Klaffke were riffing off Seale's Guardian review, a rewilding reference appears:

“Rewilding [...] doesn’t really mean ridding nature of human influence but reducing it while restoring natural processes and biodiversity. A better way to think about it, in my opinion, is that we, as humans, are using our unique skills as a species – e.g. being able to collaborate in large numbers, to apprehend certain things that other animals might not be able to do, or, even more importantly, to contemplate the future – to become stewards or guardians of nature. Practically, this means deeply exploring and understanding ecosystems and ecological processes – or life-giving systems – and making sure that things are in balance with the goal of keeping biodiversity and life flourishing.

Essentially, stewardship of natural ecosystems is a sort of Natural Intelligence equivalent to Machine or Deep Learning in which we humans become the algorithm that analyzes the data from all the various neural networks – i.e. ecosystem participants and processes – in order to recognize patterns, make predictions and adapt strategies based on feedback from nature. All with the aim to nurture the overall health and biodiversity of the natural ecosystem.”

Interestingly, in their Collective Wisdom study, Katerina Cizek and William Uricchio from the MIT Open Documentary Lab ’s Co-Creation Studio (on whom I lean heavily in my future of storytelling lectures) put Natural and Artificial Intelligence in the same “non-human systems” co-creation category. This highlights, I think, that the promise of AI “solving” the climate crisis misses the point Our Living World makes. Namely, that nature has its own highly resilient intelligence we cannot control or ever fully comprehend, merely “co-create” with at best.?

In line with Klaffke, the Co-Creation Studio suggests we move beyond the concept of “Artificial Intelligence,” and consider the role technology can play in achieving “collective wisdom,” co-created between humans, nature (i.e. “life itself”) and technology – in Our Living World’s Spinozistic parlance (in a deep Cate Blanchett voice) “everything is connected.” Nature is our co-equal partner in the Anthropocene, on which all human life (and thus technology) depends. And as per series producer Ben Roy, much more powerful and resilient than it's usually given credit for.?"Nature isn’t the victim." It doesn't need us to survive. We, and all our techno-optimist inventions, cannot exist without it.

Again, Klaffe puts it best:

“Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), or when AI can basically do everything that we humans can do, is the next goal of today’s AI proponents and developers. One step even further to that would be the idea of Superintelligence, or when AI far outstrips human intelligence […] The obvious objective here is to maximize and exceed human intelligence and, to some extent, transcend nature which is seen as an annoying limitation – in essence, the philosophy of Transhumanism.

What would be the equivalent when it comes to Natural Intelligence, i.e. Natural General Intelligence or Natural Superintelligence? I’m not sure, but I think it’s less about developing something new and transcending certain limits and much more about embracing limitations (or endings, cycles) and nurturing a new way of being, a new way of attending to the world that sees it in its full beauty.

The essential perspective shift or reframing at the bottom of all of this is to include nature (or other non-human ecosystems) within the framing, whether it’s the framing of democracy, economy, community, or intelligence.?

This and the aforementioned elements form the basis of a future that is defined not by an ever-evolving, nature-destroying, and -transcending technosphere but by an ever-evolving, nature-embracing, life- and beauty-generating biosphere.?

How amazing and rich could the future be if we became stewards of nature, produced goods that nourished nature, learned from nature to create regenerative designs, and cooperated with nature to build mutually beneficial systems?”?

True, easier said than done – as we see in this Netflix-produced mini doc about the relationship between the rhinos we filmed in Sauraha, Nepal and the community they live alongside.?

Still, concepts like Biomimicry, Natural Intelligence, Mutualism, Indigenous Ways of Knowing and framing the natural world as an autonomous and multifaceted agent we must co-create with, are key for the urgent paradigm shift needed for all of our survival (in line with Kate Crawford but contra Nick Land, including AI's survival).?

• Watch Our Living World on Netflix.