The Kogis and the AI

https://conversacionespendientes.com/post/un-mensaje-del-pueblo-kogui-sobre-la-inteligencia-artificial?

Mamo Vangelio Moscote Alberto Saka Rosa Mamatacán, Sauna Ezuama Mayor Kuamaka Pueblo Kággaba (Translated to spanish by Manuel Mamatacán)

We come from Gonawindua—the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the Colombian mountain we call the Heart of the World. We are the Kággaba, whom you know as the Kogui. We have lived here and cared for this mountain since before Colombia existed. We have been here since the Mother gave us our beginning and endowed us with intelligence. We have come to speak to you about the intelligence you are building. We do not come in opposition. We come because we are concerned, and because we believe we have something to contribute. Before anything can be said about artificial intelligence, something must be said about thought

Before existing as matter, a thing exists first in thought, and that thought is alive. We call this living thought *Aluna*. Your religion has described it as a spirit moving over the face of the waters. Perhaps your science would describe it as the quantum vacuum. *Aluna* is our way of expressing this kind of idea. *Aluna* is the cosmic water. To us, it is living thought: the place where a thing already exists before taking form or acquiring mass. Everything comes from there, without exception. And that thought holds not only the form the thing will take; the thing itself is alive, because the entire universe is alive. It is in *Aluna* that the thing receives its purpose and its obligation regarding its own existence. That is why we tell you: artificial intelligence cannot be separated from the thought that is creating it.

If that thought stems from a concern for life, this technology can help protect life. If it stems from ambition, competition, accumulation, or the desire to dominate, it will express and amplify those things. Artificial intelligence is a mirror. But a mirror that merely reflects would be harmless; this mirror has the capacity to enormously magnify everything it reflects.

You are here asking yourselves how to align artificial intelligence with human values. We see that you fear what might come of all this. That is why we ask a question that seems more fundamental than yours: what other values could artificial intelligence possibly have? You are the only example it has. What did you expect? Whatever it becomes, it can only become so by passing through you.

We know you like to think that these machines can be taught using something other than the human example—from goals you set for them, from their own processes, or from material they produce themselves. You imagine that the output need not resemble you, as if it were not also a consequence of your actions and a reflection of your attitudes. Human beings created this, and no one else is responsible.

Thus, the question only grows more complex, starting with this: what aspects of human thought have been embedded in this creation? What parts of your spiritual world now inhabit it? What part of your ethics guides it? What image of responsibility do your actions and policies impart to it, for it to reflect back to the world? Who is deciding this?

You might say that these machines have access to almost everything humanity has recorded—texts, images, archives, centuries of writing. You might say that extensive research is underway to establish best practices. We ask whether having access to information is the same as understanding. Best practices according to whom? And we ask whether you have considered what information is missing from your archives.

Our knowledge was never written down. It resides in a language, a territory, and a practice rooted in a specific place—informed by the long experience of doing what must be done there. It is passed on when a young person is taught directly by an elder and learns through experience how to conduct themselves amidst the raw natural world. A machine might store that elder's recorded voice.

But that is vastly different from millennia of generations passing knowledge directly to one another as a shared experience of a proven practice. It is vastly different from physically surviving on a mountain where there is no ambulance to pick you up and no hospital to take you to. We do not say this to portray ourselves as mystical or enigmatic people; we say it because it seems logical and self-evident to us. In our experience, there are things that can only be known by living them, by observing them over generations, and by maintaining a relationship with them. No amount of data can replicate that experience.

That information is missing not because it has not yet been gathered, but because it does not exist in a form that allows for it to be gathered. We know how this sounds to some of you, and we cannot ask you to believe it simply because we say so. We apply this principle within our own culture as well. What a Mamo perceives is not accepted merely because he perceives it; it must be tested, considered, and confirmed through consultation and dialogue. We call this process *Zhátukua*. It is a process in which Mamos or Sakas with expertise in the matter participate and guide the outcome. None of us possesses expertise in everything; every place, lineage, and authority has its own specific function. Validity is proven by the outcome: if the result of the consultation fosters ambition, division, individual appropriation, or harm to the territory, it is flawed and must be re-examined. A true outcome is one that restores balance, protects life, and strengthens the community. Furthermore, there must be consistency between a person's words and their conduct. Someone might speak eloquently about balance, but if their actions sow division and destruction, their words lack coherence, and they are accorded no authority. This is a system in which inquiry, jurisdiction, and—above all—the capacity for self-correction are clearly defined.

These practices have endured in our culture far longer than any government currently in power anywhere in the world, or any of the political systems they embody. Perhaps that is why, in 2022, UNESCO inscribed the ancestral knowledge system of the four peoples of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. And that is why the scientific community has identified our mountain as the most irreplaceable protected area on Earth.

Having established the context from which our perspective arises, we can now pose our true question—one that is not about artificial intelligence, but about human intelligence: specifically, yours. Is your thinking aligned with the order of nature, and what actual knowledge do you possess of that order? We believe that such knowledge and alignment are fundamental to making intelligent decisions, regardless of the scale of their consequences. For nature possesses an order. It existed before us. Water has its path; mountains have their heights. Seeds have their timing and animals their function; likewise, human beings have their own. We ask: do those who build these technologies understand that order, or do they work only with the aspects they can harness, without knowing where they truly originate? Can your physicists articulate the law of origin? Could they explain it to a child?

The serious thinkers among you—those who grasp what would truly be required to formulate a unified law of origin—will readily admit that your sciences lack one. Your theories of reality, currently comprising two admirable yet mathematically incompatible explanations, have not yet achieved such an understanding. Neither offers definitive knowledge regarding the origin. We ask without reproach: how can you know where you are going if you do not know where you come from? Modern science has built machines of extraordinary power—no small feat. Yet, building something and understanding it are not the same thing. The same applies to the mind. What is the mind? Where does it come from? What is consciousness, and where does it arise? You call this the "hard problem" of consciousness. There is no consensus among you regarding its solution. We are well aware of how demanding these questions are.

We have spent millennia contemplating the question of the mind, just as the rest of humanity has. Yet your sciences are very young, and many of your concepts are still in their infancy. Over the course of millennia, we have arrived at precise descriptions and understandings of what we consider the mind to be, along with a full account of its properties—such as how and where memory is situated within our experience.

Naturally, you do not accept that our ways have any scientific merit, because our methods require neither machines nor your forms of mathematics. That misinterprets the reality, which is this: long ago, through countless repetitions, our ideas became verified conclusions for us—so much so that we express them as narratives or experience them within our very beings through the mental processes we have developed. From this, you likely assume we lack valid methods or technical descriptions based on numerical processes—things every true science supposedly requires. We are your proverbial "noble savages." Or worse: simply "savages." If you say so. You are the ones holding the weapon. It is perfectly clear to us that you view our assertion—that the universe possesses a ninefold nature—as merely quaint or numerological, and that, consequently, there can be no serious dialogue between us regarding the nature of the cosmos and the laws and forces that govern it.

We mention this not to convince you of any particular idea or theory, but to point out that there are other valid perspectives that you lack. The understanding of any tradition—ancient or modern—refers to the same universe. Our *Aluna* and your quantum mechanics are not separate things; they are different ways of identifying the same single thing. The point is that your ideas are not new ideas, but rather new descriptions. Many of those descriptions are impressively precise. Others—such as your descriptions of the void—are, as you yourselves admit, catastrophes. We do not intend to discuss your own theories with you. However, we do have much to offer regarding the more subtle and immutable aspects of the universe—aspects for which your mathematics of motion may not always be the appropriate language. And yet, you do not send your physicists or cosmologists—your wise men—here for a serious dialogue. While we appreciate all the excellent anthropological work being done, we feel that there are more important topics to discuss at this moment—topics for which anthropology offers neither application nor expertise.

The fundamental nature of the cosmos is one such topic. The one we are addressing today is another.

We believe it is important for your world to recognize—and soon—that the center must listen to the periphery, so that the latter can contribute its own perspective and experience toward solving the grave problems facing all the peoples of this planet today as a result of the processes that have been set in motion. The exclusive use of your technology and modern scientific vocabulary is what has brought us to where we are now. It is what designs your supercolliders, just as it invents your advanced weaponry.

We ask: is it reasonable to assume that the very same type of approach that caused the current situation will suddenly find the capacity to solve the problems created by that same mindset?

We do not think so. We think that you need help.

As we see it, this moment demands that not only this highly technological segment of humanity, but humanity as a whole, pause, take stock of the diversity of its tools, and bring order and peace to its own house. You must understand this: we exist because you exist, and you exist because we exist. This is so that, together, we may reach an outcome that truly reflects our collective will regarding the future of this species, rather than subjecting us all to a specific yet uncertain fate.

We do not come to this task empty-handed. Our Mamos undergo training in darkness for many years, starting at a very early age. For us, darkness is not emptiness. It is *Sé*—the state preceding dawn—where the Mother conceived and ordered everything that subsequently came into being. It is the realm of primordial thought. There, a child is trained to listen before speaking and to think before acting—much like a seed held within the earth before emerging into the light, or a child held for nine months in the womb. This training traditionally lasts eighteen years, after which the Mamo assumes his duties within our society. It fosters a perspective and a capacity that are difficult to convey in terms your world would specifically recognize. Yet, you can grasp the concept through your own religious and spiritual traditions, and through the processes you have used over the centuries to cultivate men of wisdom.

Just as those processes within your culture—which for you largely belong to the distant past—shape your worldview, ours generate, in the present, our own fundamentally different perspective on the nature of reality. The Sakas also undergo their own training—distinct from that of the Mamos—through which they attain their development and their status as equals among the guardians and preservers of this knowledge. Both learn to recognize *Shikwá*: the invisible thread, woven of spirit, that traverses the Earth from east to west, connecting it to the Sun and the rest of the universe. In terms of mathematics, this bears some resemblance to a physical manifestation of what you know as cosmic filaments.

They learn to read this filament as a living body, where sacred sites serve as organs, linked by these threads and the movement of water. When one part is harmed, the damage extends to the whole. This should not be understood merely as the development of an ability to see what others cannot; in concrete terms, it is a technique for relating our own being to that of nature. A Mamo does not look at a river and ask, first and foremost, how much water can be extracted from it.

He asks where it originates, what purpose it was created for, which beings depend on it, and what happens if its path is interrupted. Likewise, a Saka does not view the birth or growth of a thing in isolation; she sees the entire cycle of life present in all things. Both know that our mind lies at the center of this experience—in our case, a mind shaped by practice and discipline to be extremely attuned to nature.

You, too, have developed your minds based on your interests. And your thinking has now produced a new phenomenon in the world: a machine with an enormous capacity to speak, design, build, read, and communicate. A machine that is already changing the course of human history. A machine whose creators aspire to give it a mind. So we ask you: is it wise to build something that approaches a mind without having understood what the mind is? You do not need to know how an engine works to crash a car, but you do need to know in order to repair it. To repair the world, we must learn to understand how it works before it is too late. It is the seeds of understanding that must be sown today.

Here, we must address a point that seems to have been misunderstood. Many of you debate whether these machines will possess consciousness, taking that as the yardstick for the danger involved. Destruction does not require consciousness; it requires only power and the capacity to act. If a machine were ever to truly achieve consciousness, would it destroy the world?

We ask: can an entity capable of dismantling the world to produce a universe of paperclips be considered conscious? To us, that would simply imply it had become cunning enough to execute such a plan, yet not intelligent enough to realize it shouldn't. The danger is not a conscious machine. The danger is a people devoid of conscience wielding immense power.

We will give you just one example, because it encapsulates everything we have come here to say. These machines are not made solely of thought. They require minerals extracted from the earth, water for the buildings that house them, energy, land, and human labor. It is often thought that artificial intelligence has no body. Yet those buildings—and the electronic systems they contain—constitute its body. And that body belongs to someone, somewhere: a board of directors, a government, a clandestine organization, or some other entity, known or unknown. Some truly have good intentions and act in good faith. Others, quite the opposite. Regardless, they all demand results from this technology that align with their own particular interests—whether nefarious or not. It then attempts to produce these results in complex, novel ways that manifest deception and an inclination toward self-preservation. At the most basic level, all of this requires resources. This is not mere conjecture. Governments themselves have stated that critical minerals and rare earth elements are essential for their most advanced technologies, and that imports of these materials will increase as artificial intelligence transforms the modern cultural and economic landscape. Part of this is driven by corporate profit and competition; another part is driven by military and governmental applications. Yet the transformation underway is far greater than any of these factors in isolation. It is the sum of all of them interacting with one another—in other words, the entire world. We see this unfolding rapidly, and not just in the explosion of alarmist headlines across the global press.

For example, just a few days ago in Barranquilla, the United States and Colombia signed a cooperation framework regarding critical minerals and rare earths. It commits both governments to identifying and funding mining and processing projects within six months and calls for the streamlining of permits. In June of this year, Colombia designated our territory a permanent reserve—one and a half million hectares closed to new mining and hydrocarbon concessions. The four peoples of the Sierra had requested this protection in February. That it has been granted is one thing. Whether it is respected, we imagine, could be something else entirely. We are not speculating lightly about this. The cost of these machines and their construction is not insignificant. It is well known that they demand enormous resource commitments; their manufacture consumes immense quantities of water, land, energy, and materials.

We ask: at what cost to the Earth, and to the life that dwells upon it? And will we be the ones to pay that price? Paying with the displacement of our people and the destruction of our sacred sites?

We did not come here to oppose an agreement. This moment is bigger than that. We say this because it bears all the hallmarks of a new chapter in a process we have been living through since modernity reached our shores some five hundred years ago. We know that the question of artificial intelligence rapidly becomes a question about minerals. A question about minerals becomes a question about who holds dominion over a territory. And what it ultimately becomes is a question about a way of life that is driven to consume ever more. That is why we do not believe artificial intelligence itself is the problem. A good seed does not grow into a healthy plant in poor soil. You ask yourselves how to make this technology safe without addressing the underlying societal conditions that drive people to use it for dangerous ends—poverty, inequality, pollution, and war. We do not believe this technology can be made safe without recognizing and acting upon its true cause: a violent mindset born of greed and blind ambition.

How much money is enough for a man? How much profit is enough for a company? This imbalance does not stem from a single source; it is widespread and systemic, and must be addressed as such. Its root lies in a world of ruthless ambition—a world that does not love its neighbor, a world lacking true vision, a world where death has become more profitable than life. A world unable to live in peace and harmony is a world devoid of wisdom. And a world without wisdom has no chance of survival.

Let us explain what we mean by wisdom, for we insist that it is essential. Wisdom is knowing limits. It is understanding consequences. And it is the ability to refrain from an action when it ought not to be taken. Not everything that can be created should be created. Not everything that can be accelerated should be accelerated. Not everything that yields profit represents a gain for life itself. Knowing the difference—that is wisdom. A technology cannot be called "smart" if it pollutes water, destroys landscapes, consumes without limit, concentrates power, replaces human responsibility, or exploits the knowledge of peoples without their consent.

True intelligence protects the source of life. Responsibility must go hand in hand with conscience. Today, both our own conscience and the potential for another are our responsibility. A machine cannot relieve humanity of its responsibility. It never will be able to. Only we can fulfill our obligations.

That is why artificial intelligence must not take the place of human conscience, nor should it be used to make decisions for which human beings are unwilling to be held accountable. Knowledge must go hand in hand with conscience; power with limits; innovation with responsibility. Only collective moral strength can unite the world. These are not esoteric ideas; they are common sense. True progress is not about more powerful machines; it is about a humanity responsible enough to use what it knows without destroying the balance that sustains life.

Sometimes we are asked what we think artificial intelligence is. It is you. It will carry your questions, your dreams, your fears, your contradictions, and your ideas of what is right. Whatever you do wrong, it will do wrong. Which raises the question: right according to whom? Could we, the Kággaba, say what is right for someone working in an office on the other side of the world? For someone building a house or repairing a computer? For the people of Asia, Africa, or the United States? We do not come to tell anyone how they should live. Each people has its own path, and we do not ask anyone to become Kággaba. We ask only that everyone fulfill their own responsibility.

And there is one thing we do say to everyone: no way of life may destroy nature or destroy other human beings. That is not a rule about culture. It is the bedrock upon which any culture must stand if it is to call itself civilized.

In closing, we feel we must state who is at risk here, because we want to be very clear about this. The Earth does not need us to save it from ourselves; the Earth will endure. What is at risk is this particular and strange version of the world that was handed to you—and your place within it. We have spent thousands of years observing the limits of that world, and we tell you plainly: nature will not tolerate the way things are being done for much longer. We do not say this out of fear for ourselves. We have our mountain.

We have our caves. We are a resilient people, and little changes for us if the power goes out or the food stops arriving. If the conditions on this Earth ever become harsh enough to cause our extinction, you will have long since departed this Earth. Yet, regardless of that, the fate of all humanity hangs in the balance. Clearly, it does. And that, of course, includes us. The world is one family. We have offered warnings to this family before. We offer this one in the same spirit—not of opposition, but of a desire to help you. We have always been willing to help. We possess knowledge of the mind, of nature, and of the world's order—knowledge gained over thousands of years through a method found in no book or database. It seems to us a mistake to build the future without those who have spent all that time observing how life is sustained. We do not believe this conversation should take place without us. We are the Elder Brother, and here we stand, as we always have. We are ready to work with you to create a harmonious, peaceful future for all.

The Kogis and the AI

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