Ever since James Lovelock conceived of his Gaia theory -- that the planet is one self-regulating organism, which the Anthropocene Age of human dominance is destabilizing -- the world has been looking for a philosophy that fits this dawning realization. The human-centered materialist progress of Enlightenment rationality opened up the space of personal autonomy and freedom from necessity as never before. But it also ravaged nature as a resource to feed industrialized desire and fragmented human communities through the cult of the individual. To mend that breach with nature and others, what departure will take us in another direction? Won't algorithms spun from the same philosophical thread lock us even more so into the same trajectory encoded into artificial intelligence, the step function of our next leap forward? It is this doubt about where we are headed that has prompted a look back at other philosophical dispositions eclipsed by Western modernity to plumb alternative futures.

Bing Song is the director of the Berggruen Institute China Center and the editor of "Intelligence and Wisdom: AI Meets Chinese Philosophers." BEIJING -- There has been much discussion on the global stage around China's ambition to lead artificial intelligence and robotics innovation over the coming decades. But few if any of the discussions by Chinese philosophers on the threats of AI and approaches to AI ethics have managed to penetrate Western-language media. Like many Western commentators, many Chinese philosophers (mostly trained in Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism) have expressed deep concern over diminishing human autonomy and free will in the age of data manipulation and automation, as well as the potential loss of purpose and meaning of human life in the long run. Others are concerned about humankind's eagerness to tinker with the human genome and the natural evolution process to achieve much-desired longevity and physical wellbeing. Confucian scholars seem to be the most alarmed as certain developments in AI and robotics, especially those related to familial relationships and elder care, directly threaten the foundation of Confucianism, which emphasizes the importance of bloodlines and familial norms.