Ancestral Intelligence & Artificial Intelligence

"Artificial Intelligence runs on electricity. Ancestral Intelligence runs on spiritual power that is connected to 300,000 years of historical and cultural wisdom." — Anthony Browder

These days with AI (artificial intelligence), it's easy to become accustomed to using and relying upon it instead of using your own brain, feeling, intuition. It's very convenient, almost too convenient. But there’s another kind of AI that we can all access. It’s called Ancestral Intelligence.

According to Anthony Browder, Professor Browder, author of the Browder Files one, two, and three, Nile Valley Contributions to Civilization and the director of IKG Cultural Resources, and the ASA Restoration Project, “ancestral intelligence” is the inherited spiritual and cultural wisdom of African people — hundreds of thousands of years deep, carried in the bloodline, and accessed through ritual and connection to the ancestors. 

But when your first response or go-to tool is artificial intelligence, your access and use of ancestral intelligence tends to weaken or not be as strong as it could be. You tend to rely less on your own AI (that is to say feeling, wisdom, thought, etc.) originating from your ancestors and instead opt-in for the other AI. 

Though both concepts may clash, they are complementary. They can support and build off of each other.

What’s Artificial Intelligence?

What’s Artificial Intelligence?
Artificial Intelligence is based upon pattern recognition. It is composed of predictive pattern recognition which is basically looking at a pattern and then a set of words. It looks at the pattern of words and predicts the most likely word. In fact, cell phones and word processing apps have been doing it for many years now. It doesn't know, it doesn't remember, it doesn't believe. 

The advantages of artificial intelligence lie in its speed, scale, and that it doesn't get tired. Its recall capabilities, assuming that you set up the recall correctly and don't overwhelm it, lends itself to automation, doing things without human intervention. It can calculate large amounts of data incredibly fast, analyze it (see the patterns) then perform some actions on it (like build a report of profitable products to sell). Anyone with a computer or mobile device can use it. There are free plans, but like most matters in the western world, the more money you spend on it, the more you can enjoy and/or use it.

What’s Ancestral Intelligence?

Ancestral intelligence (the original AI), as mentioned above, is what we literally carry in our blood, the genes of all those who came before us. We carry our mothers and fathers, grandparents, great grand parents, great great grandparents, and so on going back to the first human. Since we have it already, it doesn’t cost us any money to fully enjoy and/or use.

At an operations level ancestral intelligence is the spiritual and cultural continuity of African people across time. African identity and ancestral wisdom are inherited and carried within — uniting past, present, and future. 

"You're not an African because you're born in Africa. You're an African because Africa is born in you. It's in your genes… your DNA." - Marimba Ani, Anthropologist and author of Yurugu

There are several documented instances in which notable figures from the African world have drawn from this ancestral knowledge. For example, Harriet Tubman would suddenly pass out, then wake knowing exactly which paths were safe for escape. George Washington Carver communicated with plants to learn their medicinal properties, developing over 300 agricultural products at Tuskegee. Queen Nanny of Jamaica used deep knowledge of plants and poisons to heal her warriors and sabotage the British. Professor Anthony Browder, nearly out of funds, asked Karakhamun, a priest of the 25th Dynasty, where to dig to find his 2,700-year-old tomb and was led directly to it. 
On a more broader and higher level Ancestral Intelligence in an African cosmology of continuity. According to Professor Browder, "We are born, then live our lives. We die, then become ancestors. And then we are born again. The circle of life is actually a cycle of rites of passage: Birth, life, death, ancestorhood and rebirth." Browder ties this to the Kemetic concept of Whm Msw ("the repetition of the birth").

Ancestral intelligence is related to, whereas artificial intelligence is queried. There appear to be many ways to relate to it. They include study; meditation and visualization; ancestor veneration; and learning the ancestor’s own languages and texts. 

The 40 Day Ascension celebration of Dr. Charles S. Finch III (aka Wagaan Faye), a physician, director of Morehouse School of Medicine, Egyptologist, Ourstorian  (not historian) of African science, and author who became one of the most respected scholars in the Pan-African and Kemetic studies movement. 

The 40-day ascension is an African rite of passage practiced in Washington DC and New York City marking the soul's transition from death into ancestorhood and eventual rebirth — part of a cycle of birth, life, death, ancestorhood, and return. Tradition holds that for those 40 days you don't speak the person's name, so as not to distract the soul as it reviews its life; only after ascension can the community again say the name, celebrate the life, and ask the new ancestor for guidance and protection. This is only one of many ways to implement Ancestral Intelligence.

Artificial intelligence, by contrast, is accessed through a query prompt. You ask it a question or instruct it to perform a task, and it responds. It can even predict what you might want by noticing patterns across your queries and others', offering suggestions before you ask. This makes it especially helpful when you don't yet know enough about a subject to ask the right questions.

Where could they meet?

There are many ways that we can and probably should use artificial intelligence but only as a tool. If one develops their ancestral intelligence, they can easily intuit what to do with artificial intelligence and what not to do; what to trust and what not to trust.

“Ancestral Intelligence is a source of meaning, identity, and discernment — a compass. Without the compass, the tool becomes "a machine for manufacturing ignorance." With it, technology stays in service of truth instead of the reverse.” - Anthony Browder

Artificial intelligence certainly has its place. It can analyze, make predictions, do things in seconds that would normally take a human hours days or weeks. It’s great! Technology scholar Sabelo Mhlambi advocates applying Ubuntu's relational worldview to govern and correct artificial intelligence; ancestral philosophy as an active ethical tool. Likewise, politician and University of South Africa Professor Mathole Motshekga advocates treating African/ancestral intelligence and artificial intelligence as "dynamic and complementary," integrating ancestral knowledge into technology.

We all have Ancestral Intelligence with us. The most important thing that we should develop is the skill of listening to it inside of us.