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Today, as LLMs flood our world and as synthetic agents begin outnumbering human cogitos, we debate whether we are building our successors in silicon. Assumptions about intelligence — about what it is and what it’s worth — are being rapidly, deliriously reorganized. Nonhuman intelligence is increasingly being spoken of in relation to human extinction, whether its AIs or octopuses that come to ‘rule’ after our ousting. But this type of upheaval — in humanity’s self-image and sense of existential security — has already happened several times before.

It is, of course, impossible to predict how AI will transform our world. It is possible, however, to gauge how humans might react (spoiler: emotionally, even myopically). This is because our species has already, multiple times, been confronted with novel forms of intelligence. That is, there have already been several episodes of encounter — even panic — provoked when scientific breakthroughs have forced nonhumans, previously considered unintelligent or uninstructive, to be seen as our compeers, perhaps even our superiors, in cognitive or social capacity.

Currently, we love cephalopods, slime moulds, and LLM agents. They are our avatars for alien smarts. But prior generations fell in love with other others. From ants to porpoises to troodontids, science has — in the past century — progressively unveiled new peaks in the terrain of nonhuman intellect. And, as this talk explores, each time we have been confronted with another mind, we’ve suddenly felt far less secure, ourselves, as a species. Each time, it has heightened cultural convictions that our own extinction might not be too far off, that perhaps we really are doomed.

This talk will thus survey the history of ideas about nonhuman intelligence, often narrated as a story of human ignorance and insecurity, as the means to shine light on the ways we are reacting — culturally and collectively — to the coalescence of artificial intelligence today. After all, historically, we have been the only species that has attempted to get the measure of minds other than its own. That might not be the case for much longer.

Thomas Moynihan is a historian of ideas. Most recently, he is author of Ants, Aliens, & A.I.: Nonhuman Intelligence & Human Extinction (MIT Press, forthcoming 2027), The History of Contingency & Future-Oriented Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2026), and X-Risk: How Humanity Discovered Its Own Extinction (MIT Press, 2020). He holds a DPhil from Oriel College, University of Oxford, and is a Berggruen Fellow at the Berggruen Institute, as well as being an Affiliate Researcher for the Antikythera think-tank.

Thomas writes about how worldviews transform over time, in often radical ways, as more is learnt about the universe and our placement within it. His writing aims to explore how building insights about the external universe have — again and again — transformed our sense of who we are, where we are headed, and what we ought to be doing. Previously, his work has focused on the history of ideas surrounding human extinction and existential risk, the history of our awareness of nonhuman intelligences, alongside the development of acceptance that everything — from the growth of ideas to the evolution of life on Earth — could have gone radically otherwise. He is currently writing a book exploring how building awareness of our placement within planetary and cosmic time has, over the generations, altered peoples’ grasp of the biggest-picture priorities potentially facing our species.

Aside from being interviewed on platforms including NPR, BBC Radio 4, and CBC, Thomas has appeared in various documentaries and has been featured on podcasts such as The Atlantic’s Re:think. Regularly keynoting and presenting at institutions ranging from MIT Media Lab to the Santa Fe Institute, Thomas’s writing — on topics ranging from dolphin intelligence to risks from geoengineering — has appeared in publications like BBC Future, The New Scientist, The Guardian, Aeon, and The Independent.