Humanity 3.0: AI Makes Us Wiser — Just Not The Way We Think

Forbes

a day ago

LONDON - MAY 06: The Shadow Robot company's dextrous hand robot holds an Apple at the Streetwise ... More Robots event held at the Science Museum's Dana Centre on May 6, 2008 in London, England. The Dextrous Robotic Hand has a bank of 40 Air Muscles which make it capable of 24 movements and the most advanced robot hand in the World. (Photo by Jeff)
In his 2017 New York Times bestseller, Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, MIT professor Max Tegmark argued that AI has the potential to transform our future more than any other technology. Five years before ChatGPT made the risks and opportunities of AI the overriding topic of conversation in companies and society, Tegmark asked the same questions everyone is asking today:
What career advice should we give our kids? Will machines eventually outsmart us at all tasks, replacing humans on the job market and perhaps altogether? How can we make AI systems more robust? Should we fear an arms race in lethal autonomous weapons? Will AI help life flourish like never before or give us more power than we can handle?
In the book's press materials, readers are asked: "What kind of future do you want?" with the promise that "This book empowers you to join what may be the most important conversation of our time." But was it Tegmark's book that empowered us to join a conversation about the implications of AI? Or was it the AI technology itself?
The Question Concerning Technology
I have previously referred to the German philosopher Martin Heidegger in my articles here at Forbes. In 'This Existential Threat Calls For Philosophers, Not AI Experts', I shared his 1954 prediction that unless we get a better grip of what he called the essence of technology, we will lose touch with reality and ourselves. And in my latest piece, 'From Existential Threat to Hope. A Philosopher's Guide to AI,' I introduced his view that the essence of technology is to give man the illusion of being in control.
Heidegger has been accused of having an overly pessimistic view of the development of technology in the 20th century. But his distinction between pre-modern and modern technology, and how he saw the latter evolving into what would soon become digital technology, also suggests an optimistic angle that is useful when discussing the risks and opportunities of the AI we see today.
According to Heidegger, our relationship with technology is so crucial to who we are and why we do the things we do that it is almost impossible for us to question it. And yet it is only by questioning our relationship with technology that we can remain and develop as humans. Throughout history, it has become increasingly difficult for us to question the influence technology has on how we think, act, and interact. Meanwhile, we have increasingly surrendered to the idea of speed, efficiency, and productivity.
But, he said as early as 1954, the advent of digital technology suggested something else was coming. Something that would make it easier for humanity to ask the questions we have neglected to ask for far too long.
AI Reconnects Us With Our Questioning Nature
While the implications of AI on science, education and our personal and professional lives are widely debated, few ask why and how we came to debate these things. What is it about AI that makes us question our relationship with technology? Why are tech companies spending time – and money – researching how AI affects critical thinking? How does AI differ from previous technologies that only philosophers and far-sighted tech people questioned in the same way that everyone questions AI today?
In his analysis of the essence of technology, Heidegger stated that 'the closer we come to the danger, the brighter the ways into the saving power begin to shine and the more questioning we become.' This suggests that our questioning response to AI not only heralds danger – the existential threat that some AI experts speak of – it also heralds existential hope for a reconnection with our human nature.
AI Reminds Us Of Our Natural Limitations
The fact that we are asking questions that we have neglected to ask for millennia not only tells us something important about AI. It also tells us something important about ourselves. From stone axes to engines to social media, the essence of technology has made us think of our surroundings as something we can design and decide how to be. But AI is different. AI doesn't make us think we're in control. On the contrary, AI is the first technology in human history that makes it clear that we are not in control.
AI reminds us that it's not just nature outside us that has limitations. It's also nature inside us. It reminds us of our limitations in time and space. And that our natural limitations are not just physical, but also cognitive and social.
AI brings us face to face with our ignorance and challenges us to ask who we are and what we want to do when we are not in control: Do we insist on innovating or regulating ourselves back into control? Or do we finally recognize that we never were and never will be in control? Because we are part of nature, not above or beyond it.
When faced with our own ignorance, we humans start asking questions. And questioning, according to ... More German philosopher Martin Heidegger, is the piety of thought. Photo: Ai Weiwei's "Circle of Animals: Zodiac Heads" Snake sculpture sits outside the Adler Planetarium in Chicago on January 28, 2015 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo By Raymond Boyd)
AI Makes Us Wiser By Reminding Us Who We Are
Like the serpent in the Garden of Eden, AI presents us with a choice: Either we ignore our ignorance and pretend we still know everything there is to know. Or we live with the awareness that we may never find what we are looking for. All we can do is keep asking.
For centuries we have convinced ourselves that we can use technology to speed up natural processes. Now technology is using us to speed up us.Overlooked benefit of AI: Not about how we can use AI to gain more knowledge, or whether or not AI makes our critical thinking rod, but about facing us with our own ignorance and our own limitations as humans – like the serpent in the Garden of Eden, AI makes us ask questions about ourselves and our relationships with our surroundings. Confronting us with our own ignorance, it makes us seek a deeper understanding of ourselves and how we relate to technology and the nature in and around us. Philosophical questions about who we are, why we are here, and what is the right thing for us to do.
What makes us human is not what we know, or how our cognition, intelligence, and mind work. It's that we know that we don't know and our ability to live with and develop strategies for d