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Scroll.in ·For the curious

What Fish Can Teach Us About AI: Reflections on Reading ‘What a Fish Knows’ Alongside ‘Scary Smart

by John Kurien

Published 2026-09-26 08:00:00+00:00

If people can't recognize the mind of a fish, how will they understand a thinking machine?

0:00 / 8:55 · Narrator Charon

Context

A piece published on 26 September 2026 puts two very different subjects on the same table: the inner lives of fish and the future of artificial intelligence. The connection is a question about how humans handle unfamiliar minds. When people encounter an intelligence they do not understand, the default instinct is to turn it into a resource for extraction—treating marine life as mere biomass, or algorithms as simple data processors. The essay asks what it would take to break that habit, and how to recognize other forms of agency without projecting human traits onto them.

Show notes

An essay comparing two books—one on the inner lives of fish, the other on artificial intelligence—to examine how humans respond to non-human minds. Drawing on the author's background with small-scale fishing communities, it outlines the dangers of treating unfamiliar intelligence as a resource for extraction. The author asks whether AI development can be guided by limits and accountability rather than a drive for endless scale.

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