Sorry Folks, But You’re Gonna Have To Be Human.
I cannot tell a lie. I’ve made the acquaintance of our future AI overlords, and I’ve been playing with ChatGPT. I’ve used it for bits of work, asked it silly questions, and pushed it to see how far it would go and what it would do. And, true to form for a philosophy geek, I’ve spent a great deal of time puzzling over how this tool is going to change things in our already mixed-up, discombobulated world.
I fully expect some aspects of life in 2023 (and beyond) to be upended and radically transformed. There will, undoubtedly, be big shifts in the job market, as there have been with every new technological innovation. If the powers that be can get a machine to do something for free, then they won’t pay real humans to do it anymore. Our “line must go up” economy is built on that. As an educator, I can also see all kinds of upheaval in teaching and training. We’ll have to make a choice between being at peace with learners cheating, or finding innovative new ways of assessing and evaluating. The way we communicate and the way we consume information will change because, while this sucker writes a decent generic email, it also makes stuff up when it gets stuck (yeah, I know). Some things have been due for reconfiguring for a while, and maybe we can choose to see AI as a way to shake loose some of the things we’ve been hanging onto for too long.
I have to say, I haven’t been losing sleep over the encroaching wave that is AI. It’s not that I’m numb to the challenges it will present (it ain’t gonna be pretty), but there’s one thing about it that I find reassuring:
It’s not human. It never will be.
We want it to be. Holy smokes, do we ever want it to be. Ever noticed that robots in movies all look human-ish? Or if they don’t, they have sweet, smooth, candy-coated voices that are reassuring and familiar. We paint machines pretty colours and have them play cute little tunes (my washing machine sings to me when it’s done). We get hopping mad at our gadgets when they break down and we make comments about them having a grudge against us, which they don’t. When something does what it’s programmed to do, we get all warm and fuzzy, like it cares about us and is doing us a favour.
An AI (or any other technology, for that matter) can’t fall in love for us, can’t nurture our kids, can’t bond with the dog. It can’t make art, music, or literature, at least not the kind that really connects with an audience (look up “Uncanny Valley”). It can’t have fun for us, wonder at the universe for us, or decide what’s meaningful or important to us. It can’t see beauty, experience the passage of time, get sentimental, be proud of an accomplishment, relax, or sit in delight.
So we’re going to have to re-evaluate the why that underpins the things we do, not just as individuals, but as a collective, as a system. If we’re living in pursuit of our humanity, if it’s there as a goal and a touchstone, then having a machine take over the other details shouldn’t scare us as much. It could actually be liberating and exciting.
What if we based our education system on learning to be as fully human as possible, instead of seeing it as a babysitting service and a way to generate grades? What if we learned to value the arts and humanities again, and showed some respect to those who make careers of them? What if we fully appreciated those who build and create with their hands, or those whose days are spent making connections between people? What if part of our work was reseating ourselves in the environment, instead of hovering over it?
I’m not naïve. I’m fully aware that our current system only rewards us for making stuff, doing stuff, and buying stuff. In order to be sustained, our current lifestyle requires that we see each other as competition, even as threats. The second resources and work get scarce, we kind of turn into monsters. There’s not a lot of room in our current mess for thought, for reflection, for imagination. Essentially, we’ve made ourselves a world that doesn’t really have space for us to be human anymore. And now with AI, we’ve created something that could take over all the stuff we not-so-human-human beings are supposed to be doing with ourselves. Who knew coders could program a mass existential crisis?
I’m not freaking out too much because I’m choosing to see AI as a loud, insistent reminder that we haven’t paid nearly enough attention to being human for a while. Maybe in focusing on how to be workers, taxpayers, and consumers, we’ve forgotten how to human. We’ve forgotten that there are about 8 billion other humans out there, and as humans, we’re connected to them and we’re responsible for them. It scares the crap out of us that we’ve let human slip away, that we won’t get it back without effort, commitment, and change. It’s hard to be human, so hard that we take all of our angst and we hurl it at one another. It’s all a slap in the face, but it’s one we had coming. In some ways, it feels almost like a relief.
Here's the big kicker: as it stands, no AI technology can show us the way back (or rather the way forward). It won’t feel sorry for us if we dig ourselves a hole out of which we can’t crawl. It can’t sympathize with our suffering, and it won’t miss us when we’re gone. And it’s not because AI should care about us. That’s our job, it always has been, and this is our cue to get back to it.