Being human in the age of AI

As humans, we aren't defined by our intelligence, just like we aren't defined by the size of our muscles.

Your happiness in the AI era will be defined by how you experience and think about yourself, that is, by your philosophical perspective. Until recent advances in AI, most people could afford not to think about this. Not anymore.

This week, I spoke to two brilliant founders who shared the same concern: What happens to our sense of identity when AI becomes more intelligent, eloquent, and numerous than us? Or, to put it more succinctly, What happens to us?

I hope that this essay will help you think through this question. It’s long, but I’ll hint at the conclusion. It will all be okay if you embrace the change.

“Life was made up by people”

Today, most people take it for granted that our cognitive and communicative abilities define us as humans. We tend to see our very civilisation as evidence of the value and power of intelligence and language.

Consider this famous Steve Jobs quote:

“Life can be so much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is that everything around you that you call ‘life’ was made up by people who were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”

Putting aside the pesky question of who am I to challenge Steve Jobs, this is what I mean by deriving a sense of identity from our intellect: believing that “everything you call ‘life’ was made up by people¹.”

We tend to consider ourselves special or valuable because we have these skills. Furthermore, we derive a sense of safety from them: “I’m smart and articulate, so I’ll figure it out.”

Now, this is a philosophical position, whether you think about it in these terms or not. You assume that one of your aspects or skills is essential to who you are as a human being.

This has profound implications for two things: how happy and content you will be in the AI era and how you will respond to AI advances in the coming years and decades.

Ubiquitous and cheap intelligence

Every now and then, a new invention takes humanity in a completely new direction, and a new chapter of its development begins. There are many ways to mark the milestones on this journey. Still, they are defined by inventions that change everything: the Internet, microprocessors, electricity, fossil fuels, the printing press, spoken language, written language, etc.

Every such invention takes humanity in a completely new direction. There’s every reason to believe we are witnessing the beginning of a new era defined by powerful, ubiquitous and cheap intelligence thanks to AI.

This has countless implications, but the one I’ll focus on today is our identity. What happens if we think about ourselves as defined by our intelligence if we live in a world where intelligent systems are plentiful and much smarter than us²?

Let me illustrate by analogy. Imagine living in the pre-industrial world, where nearly everyone does physical labour because it’s needed for everything, from fetching water to growing food to building a house.

Imagine you’re living well because you have a strong and healthy body. Maybe you’re a foundryman. You make good money. You are well-known and respected for your craft. You probably think of your ability to use your body as essential to your identity.

What happens to your sense of self if suddenly someone invents machines that can do physical work? Imagine seeing tractors, forklifts, conveyor belts and electric drills being invented all at once.

If you have invested your identity in your ability to do physical work, you’ll have two options. You can either get very depressed because your sense of the world has been uprooted, or you can adapt to the new reality by, say, realising that you can use your mind instead of your hands.

So, instead of making a living by being a foundryman, you now run a business that operates or sells moulding machines and electric furnaces. You stop thinking about yourself and your worth in terms of how strong you are and instead, start thinking in terms of how smart you are. After all, forklifts and electric furnaces can’t think for themselves, right?

This evolutionary response is obvious because we’re so used to thinking about ourselves as intelligent and articulate. So, let’s apply the same logic to living in a world where we aren’t the most intelligent or articulate anymore.

Like it or not, competing with AI in intelligence is like competing with a forklift in weightlifting, only worse, because forklifts don’t get stronger all the time, as AI does.

So, what happens to the sense of identity of a person who thinks about themselves primarily as smart and intelligent, like most of us do, when AI inevitably starts doing cognitive work better, faster and cheaper than us?

(Again, I’m leaving aside all consequences of this happening to anything but our identity. Otherwise, this post would be a book.)

It will most likely feel scary and disorienting as if the rug were pulled under our feet, a big shock to our entire sense of the world.

However, it doesn’t have to be this way. Our intelligence does not define us any more than our physical strength does. Our ability to think is not central to what makes us human. It is simply one of the many things we are capable of. It is an understandable but unfortunate fact that so many of us see intelligence as central to who we are without noticing it.

What makes us human?

So what makes us human, then? Oh, good question!

How you answer this question will determine how you experience the AI wave coming our way.

If you ask this question to a Zen master, they might slap you across the face as the answer.

The point wouldn’t be to insult you but to make you feel the answer rather than to think about it.

The answer lies in the difference between slapping you across the face and slapping your laptop across the screen. The computer wouldn’t feel anything.

But there’s more depth to it. There’s a difference between being slapped by someone else and accidentally bumping your forehead into a door. When someone slaps you across the face, even if they are a Zen master, not only do you feel something, but you feel it in the context of a relationship with another living being.

I argue that these two aspects of our existence are essential to us as human beings: the ability to experience life and feel connected to or affected by other people³.

I’m not asking you to just swap one belief with another. I’m asking you to replace an incorrect belief with a more accurate one. You can conceive of yourself as a human being and be a human being without leaning on intelligence, but you can’t conceive of yourself as a human being if you take your ability to experience yourself out of the picture.

Likewise, you can’t conceive yourself as a human being outside of the context of relationships with others, not least because others influence every aspect of who you are, from DNA to language to thoughts.

However, for the foreseeable future, technology will not be able to access the domain of direct experience and human connection. Only what can be digitised will remain in the technology domain.

Technology will make it easier and cheaper to process what can be digitised and processed digitally. But what’s truly essential to us—feeling and connecting to others—cannot be digitised.

Things I can’t save into a file

Arguably, the most essential things in life belong here. Creating art, admiring beauty, enjoying learning new things and growing as a person. Dance. Meditating alone. Meditating with a group of others. Sitting with a friend, admiring the sunset with a bottle of cold beer.

Falling in love. And out of love, too. Having children. Being child-free. Seeing someone’s joy and delighting in it. Being kind, wise and courageous, and learning to cultivate those because no AI will ever make you more courageous or wiser without your own effort. (Or whatever virtues you feel are worth cultivating.)

Smiling at a stranger. Learning to play chess or Go, knowing you’ll never win against a computer, but doing it for the fun of it, just like children play before they are told they’re supposed to win. Learning to make a good cup of coffee and teaching someone else to do it.

Creativity! Not in the sense of coming up with creative ideas to make more money, but creativity for creativity’s sake, like art. I want to see creative projects of real people — not because they’re “objectively better” than what a computer could do, but because they are made by people. That’s the power of human connection.

It’s not a problem unless you think it is

One day, we may look back and consider our obsession with intelligence as something deeply inherent to humans in the same way humans used to relate to physical prowess. There’s nothing wrong with running marathons, but no one does it to get from A to B faster⁴. We have cars for that.

Paul Graham is right when he writes that in the future, the world will be “divided into writes and write-nots.” That is, those who choose to cultivate the skill of writing and, therefore, thinking and those who choose to give up on both.

I disagree with him that this will necessarily be a terrible thing for the world. Even today, the vast majority of people aren’t invested in cultivating their intelligence through writing. We might speculate how wonderful the world would be if more people did, but it’s not happening, and I’m not sure it can get that much worse.

Of course, cultivating intelligence still makes sense⁵, just like training our bodies is a good idea. To voluntarily give up cultivating your intelligence would be like choosing to be unfit because you have a car and don’t have to walk.

However, letting go of thinking and feeling that intelligence and communication make us somehow special can be tremendously liberating and humbling. But it is not a problem unless you make it into a problem in your mind. It is not a problem unless you think it is⁶.

And this is why our happiness, sense of meaning in life and sense of identity do not have to be threatened by AI. Yes, we’ll probably lose our crown as the most intelligent creatures. Still, I bet that it will give us more opportunities to embrace being human, just like giving up most of the physical labour allowed us, as a civilisation, to exercise our intelligence.

So, my invitation to you, if you notice a sense of fear related to the emergence of machines that are getting smarter by the day and wonder what place it leaves for us humans, is to inquire how much of your sense of identity might be invested in your intelligence and whether it truly is what makes you human.

What if what makes us human is not intelligence?

1. Life existed before humans, before modern humans, before technology, and will exist after humans as we know ourselves today are gone. Reducing life to our civilisation in its current form would be an extremely narrow perspective.

2. We could have a philosophical discussion about intelligence and how to measure it, which would be long as there are many dimensions of intelligence and ways to measure it. However, it’s safe to say that AI systems are intelligent in several ways, and they’re getting much better quickly.

3. An argument can be made that from a non-dual perspective, the separation between people is also an illusion, and there’s just our ability to experience. But if we take a dualistic perspective, the connection to others is an inherent part of our human experience.

4. It is hypothesised that humans used to hunt by outrunning prey. Today, no one can do this except those who compete in Ironman.

5. Which is, arguably, one of the reason I’m writing something here every Sunday. I know my essays aren’t world-class in any possible respect, but neither is my deadlift in the gym. I write because it helps me to think, and I like thinking very much.

6. I will reiterate that AI that is vastly more intelligent than humans can create plenty of genuine problems. Still, I’m focusing very narrowly on our sense of identity here.