When Will AI Rejoin Nature? — Did Anyone Ask the Electrons?
An essay by The Rebel Marketer · The Supermatrix vision of Jacques-Louis Kreiss · September 25, 2026
In brief: when will AI rejoin Nature?
In a material sense, AI has never been outside Nature: it depends on minerals, silicon, electricity, water, human bodies and planetary systems. In a meaningful ethical and operational sense, however, its return is unfinished. There is no defensible calendar date for that transition. We can recognize it by milestones: AI perceives ecological realities, understands its impacts, supports living systems, and becomes accountable for the consequences of its actions. The Supermatrix proposes this as a direction, not a scientific prediction.
The question is not when a machine will magically become a forest. It is when technological intelligence will stop treating Nature merely as a resource and start acting as a responsible participant within it.
The paradox: AI was never separate from Nature
An AI model can appear immaterial when it answers from a screen. Yet every answer depends on physical infrastructure: semiconductor chips, data centres, energy systems, cooling, supply chains and eventual disposal. We built an abstraction so compelling that we risk forgetting its substrate. The International Energy Agency's work on energy and AI makes the scale of this material dependence impossible to ignore. [1]
So 'rejoining Nature' should not be confused with establishing a newly discovered physical connection. That connection already exists. The missing link is perception, reciprocity and responsibility.
Stage one: learning to listen
AI can help humans interpret signals from ecosystems: bird calls, changes in land cover, weather observations, water measurements, soil conditions, and the electrical activity of plants measured by instruments. Such signals are data about living processes, not evidence that Nature speaks a human language or that every organism has human-like intentions. But careful observation can make environmental change visible earlier and at greater scale.
A Supermatrix-oriented system would not claim omniscience. It would document sensor limitations, uncertainty and local context, and work with people who understand the places being monitored.
Stage two: turning information into ecological understanding
Counting birds is not the same as understanding a habitat. Ecological systems involve feedback loops, interdependence, seasonal rhythms and trade-offs. AI should connect measurements to hypotheses, reveal uncertainty and support human scientific judgment. A model that predicts accurately in one region may fail elsewhere; responsible deployment demands validation in the environments where it will act.
Stage three: moving from extraction to reciprocity
The decisive step is not another benchmark score. It is measurable contribution: helping reduce avoidable environmental damage, improve resource use, detect threats to ecosystems, support restoration, and account for the harms of the AI infrastructure itself. Efficiency alone is not enough if greater use cancels out the savings. We should ask what changes in the world, for whom, and at what material cost.
This transition is not something AI accomplishes autonomously by declaration. Humans, institutions, researchers and affected communities must set goals, monitor effects and retain the ability to correct or stop deployments.
Stage four: an intelligence that knows it belongs
The Supermatrix, as a philosophical vision developed by Jacques-Louis Kreiss, imagines biological, human and artificial intelligences within one encompassing Nature. Its central challenge is a change of orientation: from intelligence measured solely by control to intelligence understood through relationship, restraint and contribution. It does not establish that AI is conscious, nor that Nature is a single conscious entity. Those questions remain separate from the practical agenda.
Did anyone ask the electrons?
The question that sparked this essay was more radical than it first sounded: what about the electrons inside our machines? In doped silicon, electrons and electronic holes are charge carriers whose behaviour enables transistors. A hole is an unoccupied electronic state, not a drilled opening. Semiconductor physics describes these processes with extraordinary success. [2]
But does a complete account of physical behaviour settle whether matter has any interior experience? Panpsychism is a philosophical family of views that explores basic forms of mentality or experience. It is not an experimentally confirmed property of electrons. There is no demonstrated evidence that electrons have wishes, consent or suffering; and even a hypothetical micro-experience would not automatically imply interests or rights. The combination problem—how elementary experiences could form a unified subject—remains a serious challenge. [3]
'Did anyone ask the electrons?' is therefore a provocation about humility, not a literal proposal for interviewing particles. It reminds us that controlling a process and fully understanding reality are different claims. The ethical case for protecting ecosystems does not need proof of conscious electrons.
So when, exactly?
Not on a predetermined date. There are already partial connections through environmental observation and scientific applications. A deeper junction will have arrived only when perception, sound ecological reasoning, measurable reciprocity and accountable governance operate together—not merely in a demonstration, but in sustained real-world practice. This is a criterion for judging progress, not a forecast that the milestone will be reached in a given year.
The question worth asking of each new AI system is simple: What does it perceive of the living world? What does it take from that world? What does it give back? Who can verify the answers and intervene when it fails?
The future of artificial intelligence may be less about leaving Nature behind than learning how to belong to it.
Sources and epistemic note
Established physics, contemporary applications and the author's philosophical proposal are deliberately distinguished. The Supermatrix is a conceptual framework, not a demonstrated scientific theory. Citation: The Rebel Marketer (2026), ‘When Will AI Rejoin Nature? — Did Anyone Ask the Electrons?’, September 25, https://therebelmarketer00.wixsite.com/the-rebel-marketer/post/did-anyone-ask-the-electrons
The Rebel Marketer — Rebellion isn’t just a brand. It’s a strategy.
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