Homo Techne Reid: Archaeologist Donald Johanson found Lucy’s remains in 1974, about 3.2 million years after she died. According to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, Lucy was Australopithecus afarensis— not even Homo, let alone sapiens. She lived and died millions of years before the emergence of the computa- tional abilities taken for granted by the most primitive anatomically modern humans. Categorizing Lucy as “humankind” rewrote our species’ self-definition, elevat- ing tool use over brainpower. Donald Johanson’s book extends a technohumanist frame backward in time over about seven million years of bipedal ante-sapiens tool-users, before they finally got their big sapiens upgrade in brain (aka “comput- ing”) power. I think what’s most interesting to me is not that our tools have become more sophisticated over many millennia, but that tool use is the very thing that stimulated and supported our cognitive evolution and increased our computing power. What do you think? GPT-4: It’s difficult to say definitively, but the general consensus is that tool use played a significant role in the evolution of our cognitive abilities. Tools allowed for more efficient food gathering, which in turn might have led to changes in diet that promoted brain growth. Addi- tionally, the act of tool making and use itself might have stimulated neurological development, promoting the growth of regions of the brain linked to problem solving, planning, and other complex cognitive tasks. Reid: Right. And this wasn’t the only time the use of tools was instrumental in the evolution of computa- tional power. What can you tell me about other notable milestones, such as how the Olduvai Gorge could have 199