Artificial Intelligence: The Park Rangers of the Anthropocene

In an intriguing thought experiment, landscape architect Bradley Cantrell, historian Laura Martin, and ecologist Erle Ellis have taken this ethos to its logical extreme, and ended up with what they call a "wildness creator"--a hypothetical artificial intelligence that would autonomously protect wild spaces. We'd create it, obviously, but then let it go, so it would develop its own strategies for protecting nature. Maybe it blocks out human-made light or noise. Maybe it redirects the flow of water or destroys litter. Think Skynet crossed with Captain Planet, or the Matrix meets Ranger Rick, or IBM's Watson meets Greenpeace.