Machines Writing Histories Using Insect Algorithms: Toward an Age of Environmental Historiography for Artificial Intelligence

Insect-inspired algorithms have broad appeal in artificial intelligence (AI). They power the labeling, selection, and grouping of data from the past, including the human past. Insect-inspired AI is therefore of interest to historians and, in particular, environmental historians. On an almost separate track, global environmental histories have highlighted the shaping role of capital in driving extractive activities. AI as capital, though, is not the only lens available for seeing artificial insects. Work on green AI, as well as responsible AI more broadly, suggests that another future for the entangled management of data from the past is possible. At present, however, these approaches are largely separate, and they do not accommodate experiences beyond the Global North. In contrast, First Nations’ ontologies provide potential approaches to a nourishing AI in which the social and environmental impacts of algorithms and associated hardware, software and labor systems are considered together, dynamically.