Humans, Ants, and AI: Where Intelligence Really Sits
Why devotion — not prediction — is the highest form of intelligence
We like to think of intelligence as a ladder.
Humans at the top.
Machines climbing fast.
Everything else below.
But the closer you look, the more that ladder collapses.
Take the ant. A single ant has fewer neurons than a crumb of bread has grains. Yet, put thousands together, and you get cities without architects, highways without planners, armies without generals. Colonies organise themselves, adapt to floods, reroute supply chains, and defend against intruders. No blueprint. No code. Just instinct and intention wired into each fragile body.
Now consider AI. With trillions of parameters, it can process more data in a second than an ant colony could in a lifetime. And yet, by some neuroscientific measures, it still sits below the ant. Why?
Because AI doesn’t intend.
It doesn’t need to survive.
It doesn’t generate goals.
It predicts. That’s all.
And here is where the fear comes in.
Every wave of technology has carried with it the anxiety of replacement. When the printing press appeared, people said it would destroy memory. When photography arrived, painters despaired — yet it paved the way for Impressionism, Cubism, and even photography itself as a form of art. When cars clattered onto the streets, Henry Ford was told they were a gimmick — that horses would outlive his invention. They didn’t.
The pattern is always the same: old roles vanish, new ones appear. We lost the scribes — those who once copied books by hand — but gained journalists who spread ideas at scale. We lost carriage drivers but built whole industries around automobiles. We lost one kind of craft, and found others: from printed books to photography, from modern art to cinema, from radio to computers, from the internet to AI. Each step opened a new frontier. And still the question remains: where will this lead — what’s next?
AI is no different. Yes, it already replaces roles in call centres, diagnostics, copywriting, and even parts of the creative industry. But it also opens new spaces:
In medicine, AI detects cancers invisible to the human eye.
In science, it accelerates protein-folding discoveries that might lead to cures.
In climate research, it models futures no single mind could contain.
In the creative field, it can generate drafts, variations, and prototypes — while freeing humans to focus on meaning, story, and emotional resonance.
The question isn’t whether AI will replace us — it already does, in places. The question is: what do we do with the space it opens?
Embodied Intelligence: The Physicality of Knowing
Here’s what makes the difference.
Human and ant intelligence are embodied. They are tied to the body, the senses, the environment. An ant’s “knowledge” of a trail isn’t data on a screen — it’s pheromone signals, vibrations underfoot, sunlight shifting on its tiny eyes.
Our own intelligence is no less physical. It is in the hands when we shape clay, in the stomach when we feel unease, in the eyes when we recognise beauty. A designer doesn’t just think an idea — they sketch it, touch it, live inside it.
AI has no body. It can process the pixels of a sunset, but it will never feel warmth on its skin or the ache in the throat that comes with awe. Creativity doesn’t live in the output; it lives in the sensation that led to it.
The “Why” Behind the “What”
AI can generate a logo. It can calculate a pleasing colour palette and balance shapes into harmony.
But it will never ask why.
Why this symbol? Why this brand? What story do we want to tell? What emotion should stir when someone sees it for the first time?
An AI can generate ten thousand logos in a minute. But a designer will spend a week obsessed with a single curve — because they are thinking about the human on the other side of that design.
The “why” is devotion. It’s the human drive to make something not just correct, but meaningful. To design for another, to create for someone else’s heart. This is empathy turned into form — and no machine can truly feel it, no matter how well it simulates the surface.
The Spectrum, Not the Ladder
This is why the old metaphor of a ladder fails. The ladder suggests AI is just a faster version of us — climbing rung by rung until it surpasses us. But intelligence isn’t linear.
It is a spectrum.
Humans: foresight, imagination, obsession, meaning-making.
Primates and dolphins: advanced social memory, empathy, and foresight.
Pigs and crows: surprising problem-solving, tool use, ingenuity.
Ant colonies: decentralised, embodied, collective survival.
Individual ants: simple but driven by instinct.
AI: narrow brilliance — immense computation, but no purpose.
On this spectrum, AI doesn’t rise above the ant. It sits apart. Astonishing, yes — but passive.
Collaboration Is the Real Story
Which is why collaboration is the real story.
Because when you see intelligence as a spectrum, not a ladder, you stop asking who will “win” and start asking how these different forms of knowing can fit together.
AI doesn’t replace the body; it extends the mind. It undertakes vast processing and pattern-making so that humans can focus on meaning. Just as ants rely on pheromone trails to coordinate, we can utilise machines as our external memory, pattern-finders, and amplifiers.
Collaboration means:
In medicine, the doctor brings empathy, context, and trust; the AI brings infinite scans and statistical precision.
In design, the human brings obsession, story, and care; the AI brings speed, variation, and possibility.
In science, the researcher brings curiosity and the courage to ask a new question; the AI brings the ability to test millions of hypotheses in a matter of seconds.
On its own, AI is a tool. With us, it becomes part of a larger intelligence — one that is embodied, intentional, and alive.
That is the real story: not replacement, but weaving. Not the end of human intelligence, but its expansion.
The AI has prediction.
The ant has survival.
We have devotion.
And that — still — is the highest form of intelligence.
— Alexandra
Welcome to my ‘Humanity in Pixels’ Series
This is a lens, a journal, a small act of resistance.
A reminder that design is culture-making, memory-shaping, and meaning-building.
Let’s design what truly matters,
for now, and for what comes next.
— Best,
Alexandra
Reflections on design, storytelling, and human futures by Alexandra Jugović. © 2025