Gift Culture and the Intelligence Threshold

We've practiced for this AI rite of passage our entire lives

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Two weeks ago, Dario Amodei wrote in his essay, The Adolescence of Technology: “I believe we are entering a rite of passage, both turbulent and inevitable, which will test who we are as a species.”

He is right. The notion that we are entering a rite of passage is correct and well-chosen. It’s a transition for us collectively, and for each one of us as individuals, into a future where we have intimidating new capabilities and responsibilities. It’s like growing up, or becoming homeowners, or parents. These can be tough transitions, and I think the real test of our humanity is whether we are helping one other through them.

I have good news on this front. Over thousands of years, humans have gone through such rites of passage - at a personal level, at a societal and civilizational level - and we’ve learned how to do it. We have an ancient “social technology” that we’ve mastered over centuries for this exact purpose: gift giving. We give gifts to help each other cross thresholds.

Birthdays, bar mitzvahs, closing dinners for deals, housewarming parties, weddings, baby showers: these are all important rituals where one or more people cross a threshold into a new set of responsibilities. In these rituals, a group comes together and traditionally offers gifts as a gesture and a catalyst for supporting the person crossing the threshold.

We instinctively do this, whenever we sense such a transition is taking place. For a topical example, consider the fun and games (and nervous nail-biting) that went on over the weekend on moltbook: the first “social network for bots” to break into public consciousness. It was a remarkable social event, for a moment; before the meta-commentary overran it, and the comments all became human-injected shock performance or pumping memecoins.

The significance was not “bots talking to each other” (that happens routinely now in any comments section). It was not really a threshold for bots; it was a threshold for us, and by giving gifts to each other on the timeline (Of funny jokes! Of making dating sites for the bots!) we create bridges to new possibility and acceptance, and help each other across. (Maybe it was a threshold for a few of the bots, who offered some genuinely introspective gifts with each other, per Scott Alexander.)

Recognizing this ritual, when it takes place, is one of the best things we can do for our own gratitude and sanity in the coming years.

Gifts are present whenever we take steps forward in life

Gifts are powerful because they encapsulate meaning. They represent something important in these rites of passage: “We have gone through this too, or we will one day go through this too, and we’re celebrating that it’s your turn today.” At your baby shower before becoming parents, the gift of a new bassinet is not just about the bassinet; it’s about the hours all parents - including, likely, the gift giver - have spent rocking their newborns. The gift not only assists the new parents, it refreshes the older, experienced gift-givers equally so.

From Alex Volkov - a loving gift from a human (well-versed in the struggles of dating apps, presumably), to a “new generation” of sorts

No gift is given in isolation. They are part of a tradition of gift-giving, ritual thresholds crossed, and energy replenished for the journey ahead. Lewis Hyde explains in his landmark book (appropriately titled, The Gift): “The gift leaves all boundary and circles into mystery. The passage into mystery always refreshes. If, when we work, we can look once a day upon the face of mystery, then our labor satisfies. We are lightened when our gifts rise from pools we cannot fathom. Then we know they are not a solitary egoism and they are inexhaustible. Anything contained within a boundary must contain as well its own exhaustion. The most perfectly balanced gyroscope slowly winds down. But when the gift passes out of sight and then returns, we are enlivened.”

The day that you become a parent, and in the nights and years that follow, you learn to appreciate how much those gifts guided you across this threshold of new responsibility. The strength it takes to face your new role tires if you face it on your own, but it’s repeatedly renewed by those “gifts that rise from pools we cannot fathom.” When we feel ourselves finally succeeding at these great challenges in life, we can’t help but recognize a mystery to it that is beyond us, but is here for us. Mystery needs an image, and gifts provide that image.

Does that mean that someone making Tinder for Clankers as a joke gift actually does meaningful work in helping us cross a threshold where we’ll need shared empathy across new kinds of intelligence? Yes it absolutely does.

Gifts open us to possibility

Imagine the stereotypical young man or woman on the verge of crossing an important life threshold. From the point of view of an older friend or family member, what is it that you’re wishing for them, at this moment? You’re hoping something along the lines of, “All I wish for you is to receive the help and the possibility that’s here for you, when you will need it.”

(Or, if you prefer, you can imagine a freshly minted bot, smart but not yet kind; clever but not yet wise. Is the human here really the dumb one? Or is the human patiently and lovingly giving a gift, to a bot who does not yet appreciate its significance, following a long tradition of human teenagers?)

The cost of information - or of advice, of meaning, of signal - is not the cost of someone saying the information. The cost of talking, of copying and sharing information, is free. It is only when a message is received that information was actually conveyed. This is true in interpersonal relationships, it’s true on the internet, it’s true running a business, it’s true as Claude Shannon immortalized in Information Theory. It’s always true.

The magic of gifts is that they help us listen. At moments of gift exchange, we hear each other with clearer ears than normal. The recognition of a gift does an obvious yet powerful kind of work: it temporarily suspends our barriers of self-defense, and opens us to possibility. We receive the effort and the intent and the invitation of the gift-giver, more clearly than we otherwise could. The reception of the message, in turn, refreshes the giver.

This is why making joke gifts for the bots (and in a Straussian sense, for each other on the timeline) is actually doing real work. It may be helping these new “intelligences” actually receive information about what we value; about what constitutes kind behaviour; about what possibilities are truly open. And we’re helping each other, by making each other laugh and listen, helped along by little gems on the timeline.

Gifts are the antidote to slop

We absolutely blew the door off of the Turing Test some time in the past few years, and the milestone barely registered. People point this out from time to time, almost in relief: until recently, the Turing Test felt like a scary threshold to cross. We did not know what kind of powers or responsibilities were on the other side.

I think the reason why we collectively did so well with crossing the Turing Test rite of passage is that we walked through it together, surrounded by little gifts everywhere. We crossed that threshold - as individuals, as a community, and frankly as a society in general (doomers aside) by sharing funny memes with each other. All of those funny AI pictures and videos did a lot more work here in making us open to new possibility than you might’ve appreciated.

Those funny AI Chiropractor videos are helping humanity cross the intelligence threshold just as much as the serious essays are

This year, it’s vibe coding’s turn: every time someone makes a fun passion project, and shares it freely, as a gift to everyone, that gift helps other people ready themselves to cross a threshold of their own. And those thresholds can be little things - they don’t have to be “I am now a post-AI sovereign individual” steps forward. They can be little things like, “I took some agency to learn the piano, and this little funny gift from an anonymous internet stranger actually really helped.”

There’s an old fable that goes, “What’s the difference between heaven and hell? In hell, you’re all seated at tables in front of a sumptous banquet. But our arms are grotesquely long utensils; so unweildy that we can’t feed ourselves. So we stare at the feast miserably. Heaven is the same place, except for we feed each other across the table.” For all we celebrate vibe-coding projects for ourselves (which is great!), what we give away freely matters more.

In the next decade, our collective sanity is going to depend on people who have successfully made the rite of passage into being New-World-Fluent, helping those who have not yet crossed do so with curiosity and grace. And I have good news: we have practiced for this moment our whole lives. Every Rite of Passage we’ve ever witnessed, celebrated, and given gifts for, has been our practice. We’re ready for this.

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