So first up some analysis on the question. It also functions as padding to make sidebar not sidestep spoiler tags. If the “metaphorical” functioning is exactly like gpu the questions loses a lot of it’s interestingness. A scenario like that would be fascinatin partly how such an organizaation would be dissimilar to a gpu model. Like squids are pretty smart but they don’t run on a centralised processing paradigm. I will interpret the characteristic in that they have “power level” similar to computers and humans, they are not “weak”. That is not to be about the quality of it, I don’t assume that a human brains scan could be translated into ant connections.
There would be more demand for non-linear communication methods or existing linear communication methods would be used more in parallel.
Animal farming for meat debate would get more heated as ant-nests would likely be granted some kind of personhood or legal status stronger than property and delinating why meat animals are okay to be property gets harder to defend.
Freedom of cognition would be awakened from a dormanant trivial right into an actual issue as it is way easier to spy on how an ant farm processes information than do a detailed invasive brain scan. Freedom of expression and privacy issues would be hightened. I would assume it would become taboo or would require extensive permission to study the soul-life of a hive. This would also inform philosophical issues about humans.
Espionage and physical security would get a whole more hardcore as most walls would literally have ears and the physical barriers for access to sentient beings would get way more stringet requirements (you can’t have bars for jail anymore)
The virustypes that sentient cultures care about would be increased significantly. More job openings for virologists.
Specisims would become an actual issue as sentient cultures would not be homogenous as species. “Crimes against humanity” would be too narrow a category to catch big misbehaviours.
The issues and conflicts involving “The Eternal Doctrine” and “The Path of Now and Forever” from star control II could become an issue. If humans felt like ants were an existential (potential) threat for them would it be okay to go to war with them? How pre-emptive such a fear is allowed to be? Would it be okay to limit the impact of ants in the name of human security or would this be unethical slavery? If both doctrines are dismissed as a soceity what do we do about individuals that try to follow them?
Definition of battery could become thorny as concious directed touch and unconcious uncontrolled touch could be hard to tell apart. After all the individual ant is unconcious so how much a human needs to be immersed in ants to be counted as being invaded?
There would be increased demand for conifers.
A lot more computer parts could be repairable. More fine tuned dexterity tasks would be possible.
It would be way easier to have biologically immortal minds as ants exit and enter an ant hive better. It would also be easier to go around teleometer and other aging limitations. You could have long term eye-witnesses (expect hives are blind, but for other senses).
As there would be very different tasks and needs from a very different animal goods like sugar would probably surgar would surge in demand (samey with 9?)
Skilled hive artist would probably create very detailed painting so the state of the art of pictures would raise dramatically.
There would be a need for computer interface for hive-individuals. Keyboards and mice won’t cut for that need.
An ant-hive can not effectively communicate sonically without enchancements. There would be need for human-ant communication interface. Looking glasses for humans to see ant arms? Presses to pheronomes plates? Everybody just uses internet messgage boards?
Small robots could be used to invade hive-minds and either spy on them or implant and manipulate thoughts (freedom of cognition again)
There would be a lot more interest in psychology and the importance of the field would sky rocket. Ditto for social studies.
Murders could get messier to solve as ant invasion to detriment to person health could be harder to detect.
There would be crises for people that identify with their physical bodies as it would be apparent that cross pollunating ants from two hives doesn’t destroy the individuals. Ship of theseus switch of ant dna lineages woudl be possible.
Because there are globe spanning supercolonies of ants which are now intelligent there is an sudden rebellion/insurrection/invasion event which might get military in nature. Do ant individuals become citizens of their geographical country? Are ant countries parralel but separate from human states? Might need a lot of map redrawing.
Ant pheronome analysis and the price and production of them would increase. Bodily autonomy issues of not being injected with extra or manipulative pheromone against ones will. (again freedom of cognition)
Doors, stairs and elevators would be heavily disfavoured or accessibility issues would raise in importance. The whole issue of whether it is necceasry to meet face-to-face would become in question (what if one doesn’t have a face or which of your ants face should be used for representation?). Shaking and many social ques using hands would come in question.
There would probably reveal or form an ant culture which would probaby be fascinating and enrich societys cultural capital.
Sexual misconduct would become harder to regulate if the gamette ants of colonies are not under direct concoius control. Fraternity tests would have increased demand. Guardianaship of children would get hazy.
City zoning and living regulations would need to be rewised
Murder would probably need to extend to dispersal of ant-hives. Ant-hived locations would probably need to benefit from some kind of home protection. Would it be permissible to have human no-go zones?
Graphs and other visual tools would probably go out of fashion or would need alternatives. The blind sentient population just went up a lot.
If slaver ants are sentient too we have a serious problem with civil peace. Can it be criminal to belong to that species? Is it wrong for society to limit species natural behaviour (Zootopia)
Right to education would be complicated as human society would be pretty clueless to how to give a good upbringing to a hive-individual.
What does equal opportunity mean for hives vs bipedals? Disability issues would be enflamed
There would suddenly be need to seriously step up on neurodiversity-like issues. IQ probably becomes invalid. Or humans might reliably be IQ<100. There are multiple species of ants which have different queen functions and very much different species properties. The diversity between ants would be huge compared to diversity within humans. It would be extraordinairly astonishing if there were no correlations in statistics.
~60 minutes
A lot of land that was industrial before is now suddenly residential. If hives have or aquire ownership over their physical surroundings there is a massive alnd redistribution. There might be increased demand for real estate agents and lawyers.
Would it be ethical to leave an area entirely composed of hives alone if the same area doesn’t happen to include humans? Would it be ethical to impose human values to that area?
How do we shake the global political structure? How many UN seats we give out? US electoral college would be way more out of wack to represent population. Do ant nations need to sign up in to standard international law treaties?
There would be a lot more academics interested in ants (samey with 17?)
Hive healthcare is probably very underdeveloped. How do we priotise research into hive health? What do we do with the population that effectively doesn’t have healthcare currently? Is it ethical to maintain any research into bipedal health if hives desperately need medicine?
Any bipedal society that can improve the situation for hives is likely to gain large political favour of them. This might lead into a race to please them and/or massive defences against ants for those that don’t please them.
Any invention to have hives be mobile would propbably be very appriciated by hives
There would probably be some hives that would wish to not make their non-biological parts out of leaves and treeparts. Making a replacement material might be valuable. Glass colony containers would probably surge in demand.
Making a “roofscraper” might be a sensible thing to do. Roofscaper cities could be stupidly population dense. Skycrapers full of rooms full of roofscapers all of which spend their time on the internet could lead into a kind of virtual city, like an upload data center.
Democrasy could seriously come in question if the bipedal population is a small numerical minority. Minority rights issues could get boltstered and enflamed.
Cognitivive labour markets would suddenly be flooded by a big population. Justifying buying computers might not make sense if ant bodily needs are modest and start to compete with indian call centers.
Increase in simulatenous minds alive could supercharge ideological velocity making it harder to keep up with news and might make china-style societal control look a lot more appealing.
Differences in reproductive rates might make political balances between nations strained.
Discovery of a sudden sentient species might make society expect such a event happen again. One might want to be ready for it but one might also try to avoid it by actively suppressing sentience.
Fermi paradox considerations get wacky.
People will probably take AI risk a lot more serious and the ant case will make society decide AI-personhood, alignment and such issues earlier.
Sudden apperance of sentient species raises the question do we have moral duty to bring about as many ney sentient species as possible. How does human flourishing differ from sentience flourishing?
Different biological needs open up new possiblities for crewed spacelight. It might be easier to long term freeze hives and their upkeep in space might be easier. They probably need less total mass meaning lighter vechicles. Ants that can be totally herbivorous might be able to feed off essentially from sunlight for big times and distances.
Brain area research is relatively less valuable. There is a parallel interst in how a hive is informationally organised.
~1h 35 min
Safeties
12 is an expansion of 9: There could develop a market for hives to have their ant population be made up of more desirable ants. Ants can be made to smell compatible for a hive and rich hives might want ants that are faster, mor reliable and more long lived and durable.
36 is a bit samey with 17: People would know and would learn a lot more about ants. Basic school biology would probably be part of civics and ant biology facts woudl be more everyday. In the sudden discovery phase there would be a need to package up these things so that a lto of people can get up to speed and to facilate either peaceful or more effectively hostile relations.
So first up some analysis on the question. It also functions as padding to make sidebar not sidestep spoiler tags. If the “metaphorical” functioning is exactly like gpu the questions loses a lot of it’s interestingness. A scenario like that would be fascinatin partly how such an organizaation would be dissimilar to a gpu model. Like squids are pretty smart but they don’t run on a centralised processing paradigm. I will interpret the characteristic in that they have “power level” similar to computers and humans, they are not “weak”. That is not to be about the quality of it, I don’t assume that a human brains scan could be translated into ant connections.
There would be more demand for non-linear communication methods or existing linear communication methods would be used more in parallel.
Animal farming for meat debate would get more heated as ant-nests would likely be granted some kind of personhood or legal status stronger than property and delinating why meat animals are okay to be property gets harder to defend.
Freedom of cognition would be awakened from a dormanant trivial right into an actual issue as it is way easier to spy on how an ant farm processes information than do a detailed invasive brain scan. Freedom of expression and privacy issues would be hightened. I would assume it would become taboo or would require extensive permission to study the soul-life of a hive. This would also inform philosophical issues about humans.
Espionage and physical security would get a whole more hardcore as most walls would literally have ears and the physical barriers for access to sentient beings would get way more stringet requirements (you can’t have bars for jail anymore)
The virustypes that sentient cultures care about would be increased significantly. More job openings for virologists.
Specisims would become an actual issue as sentient cultures would not be homogenous as species. “Crimes against humanity” would be too narrow a category to catch big misbehaviours.
The issues and conflicts involving “The Eternal Doctrine” and “The Path of Now and Forever” from star control II could become an issue. If humans felt like ants were an existential (potential) threat for them would it be okay to go to war with them? How pre-emptive such a fear is allowed to be? Would it be okay to limit the impact of ants in the name of human security or would this be unethical slavery? If both doctrines are dismissed as a soceity what do we do about individuals that try to follow them?
Definition of battery could become thorny as concious directed touch and unconcious uncontrolled touch could be hard to tell apart. After all the individual ant is unconcious so how much a human needs to be immersed in ants to be counted as being invaded?
There would be increased demand for conifers.
A lot more computer parts could be repairable. More fine tuned dexterity tasks would be possible.
It would be way easier to have biologically immortal minds as ants exit and enter an ant hive better. It would also be easier to go around teleometer and other aging limitations. You could have long term eye-witnesses (expect hives are blind, but for other senses).
As there would be very different tasks and needs from a very different animal goods like sugar would probably surgar would surge in demand (samey with 9?)
Skilled hive artist would probably create very detailed painting so the state of the art of pictures would raise dramatically.
There would be a need for computer interface for hive-individuals. Keyboards and mice won’t cut for that need.
An ant-hive can not effectively communicate sonically without enchancements. There would be need for human-ant communication interface. Looking glasses for humans to see ant arms? Presses to pheronomes plates? Everybody just uses internet messgage boards?
Small robots could be used to invade hive-minds and either spy on them or implant and manipulate thoughts (freedom of cognition again)
There would be a lot more interest in psychology and the importance of the field would sky rocket. Ditto for social studies.
Murders could get messier to solve as ant invasion to detriment to person health could be harder to detect.
There would be crises for people that identify with their physical bodies as it would be apparent that cross pollunating ants from two hives doesn’t destroy the individuals. Ship of theseus switch of ant dna lineages woudl be possible.
Because there are globe spanning supercolonies of ants which are now intelligent there is an sudden rebellion/insurrection/invasion event which might get military in nature. Do ant individuals become citizens of their geographical country? Are ant countries parralel but separate from human states? Might need a lot of map redrawing.
Ant pheronome analysis and the price and production of them would increase. Bodily autonomy issues of not being injected with extra or manipulative pheromone against ones will. (again freedom of cognition)
Doors, stairs and elevators would be heavily disfavoured or accessibility issues would raise in importance. The whole issue of whether it is necceasry to meet face-to-face would become in question (what if one doesn’t have a face or which of your ants face should be used for representation?). Shaking and many social ques using hands would come in question.
There would probably reveal or form an ant culture which would probaby be fascinating and enrich societys cultural capital.
Sexual misconduct would become harder to regulate if the gamette ants of colonies are not under direct concoius control. Fraternity tests would have increased demand. Guardianaship of children would get hazy.
City zoning and living regulations would need to be rewised
Murder would probably need to extend to dispersal of ant-hives. Ant-hived locations would probably need to benefit from some kind of home protection. Would it be permissible to have human no-go zones?
Graphs and other visual tools would probably go out of fashion or would need alternatives. The blind sentient population just went up a lot.
If slaver ants are sentient too we have a serious problem with civil peace. Can it be criminal to belong to that species? Is it wrong for society to limit species natural behaviour (Zootopia)
Right to education would be complicated as human society would be pretty clueless to how to give a good upbringing to a hive-individual.
What does equal opportunity mean for hives vs bipedals? Disability issues would be enflamed
There would suddenly be need to seriously step up on neurodiversity-like issues. IQ probably becomes invalid. Or humans might reliably be IQ<100. There are multiple species of ants which have different queen functions and very much different species properties. The diversity between ants would be huge compared to diversity within humans. It would be extraordinairly astonishing if there were no correlations in statistics.
~60 minutes
A lot of land that was industrial before is now suddenly residential. If hives have or aquire ownership over their physical surroundings there is a massive alnd redistribution. There might be increased demand for real estate agents and lawyers.
Would it be ethical to leave an area entirely composed of hives alone if the same area doesn’t happen to include humans? Would it be ethical to impose human values to that area?
How do we shake the global political structure? How many UN seats we give out? US electoral college would be way more out of wack to represent population. Do ant nations need to sign up in to standard international law treaties?
There would be a lot more academics interested in ants (samey with 17?)
Hive healthcare is probably very underdeveloped. How do we priotise research into hive health? What do we do with the population that effectively doesn’t have healthcare currently? Is it ethical to maintain any research into bipedal health if hives desperately need medicine?
Any bipedal society that can improve the situation for hives is likely to gain large political favour of them. This might lead into a race to please them and/or massive defences against ants for those that don’t please them.
Any invention to have hives be mobile would propbably be very appriciated by hives
There would probably be some hives that would wish to not make their non-biological parts out of leaves and treeparts. Making a replacement material might be valuable. Glass colony containers would probably surge in demand.
Making a “roofscraper” might be a sensible thing to do. Roofscaper cities could be stupidly population dense. Skycrapers full of rooms full of roofscapers all of which spend their time on the internet could lead into a kind of virtual city, like an upload data center.
Democrasy could seriously come in question if the bipedal population is a small numerical minority. Minority rights issues could get boltstered and enflamed.
Cognitivive labour markets would suddenly be flooded by a big population. Justifying buying computers might not make sense if ant bodily needs are modest and start to compete with indian call centers.
Increase in simulatenous minds alive could supercharge ideological velocity making it harder to keep up with news and might make china-style societal control look a lot more appealing.
Differences in reproductive rates might make political balances between nations strained.
Discovery of a sudden sentient species might make society expect such a event happen again. One might want to be ready for it but one might also try to avoid it by actively suppressing sentience.
Fermi paradox considerations get wacky.
People will probably take AI risk a lot more serious and the ant case will make society decide AI-personhood, alignment and such issues earlier.
Sudden apperance of sentient species raises the question do we have moral duty to bring about as many ney sentient species as possible. How does human flourishing differ from sentience flourishing?
Different biological needs open up new possiblities for crewed spacelight. It might be easier to long term freeze hives and their upkeep in space might be easier. They probably need less total mass meaning lighter vechicles. Ants that can be totally herbivorous might be able to feed off essentially from sunlight for big times and distances.
Brain area research is relatively less valuable. There is a parallel interst in how a hive is informationally organised.
~1h 35 min
Safeties
12 is an expansion of 9: There could develop a market for hives to have their ant population be made up of more desirable ants. Ants can be made to smell compatible for a hive and rich hives might want ants that are faster, mor reliable and more long lived and durable.
36 is a bit samey with 17: People would know and would learn a lot more about ants. Basic school biology would probably be part of civics and ant biology facts woudl be more everyday. In the sudden discovery phase there would be a need to package up these things so that a lto of people can get up to speed and to facilate either peaceful or more effectively hostile relations.