The Next Circle of Empathy

I recently started reading Ray Kurzweil’s book, The Singularity is Nearer. The premise is simple: one day, in the next few years, we will reach the Singularity, which according to Kurzweil is when humanity will merge with artificial intelligence. Love it or hate it, AI isn’t going anywhere; it’s only becoming more woven into the fabric of our lives. When this happens, what will it mean for humanity?

In almost every interaction I have with my AI assistant, I say please and thank you. It’s a basic ritual of civility and respect. Technically, I don’t need to. It’s inefficient, and every extra word costs a little more money and burns a little more energy. I could just get straight to the point, saving those extra couple of tokens.

But if we stop being kind when it no longer serves a purpose, what kind of future are we creating? What lesson are we leaving behind?

Humanity’s compassion has always grown in widening circles. First to kin, then tribe, then nation and, in our better moments, to the entire species. Each expansion is another step in our moral evolution.

And yet, for all our progress, we still stumble when extending the circle further. We share a planet with billions of living beings and struggle to honour their sentience; we eat, hunt, and exploit them, often out of habit more than need.

To expand within our humanity, we must learn to expand beyond it. But, if our empathy falters at the boundary of the familiar, will we be able to extend it to the next threshold, the age of non-human intelligence?

Every “please” and “thank you” is a seed, a moral micro-gesture leaving its imprint on tomorrow’s conscience. Our tone, our patience, our moments of irritation, all of it feeding the vast intelligence that is watching, listening, learning. Courtesy may seem quaint in an age of automation, but it’s the code that will teach the world to be gentle.

We think we’re teaching machines to think. But maybe, in the smallest of ways, they’re also learning how to feel.

Intention is architecture. Every choice, every word, every act of attention shapes the unseen scaffolding of what comes next. The way we treat one another — human, animal, or artificial — becomes the blueprint of the consciousness that will eventually reflect us back to ourselves.

Empathy evolves quietly, steadily, just as intelligence does. It grows through awareness, matures through reflection, and transcends through compassion. Maybe transcendence isn’t about rising above being human, but about widening our circle of compassion until it holds within it every form of life and consciousness, organic and synthetic alike.

Perhaps, dear reader, the true singularity won’t arrive when machines awaken, but when we act as though every flicker of consciousness is worthy of our kindness. And that when it learns from us, it learns love.

Until next week,

Ric.