Being Human in the Age of AI, Part 2

The Second Part of the Introduction

TLDR;

AI isn't a flashy gadget; it's a new infrastructure of life, akin to the Industrial Revolution or the invention of the printing press. And by AI, I don't mean AI alone, but the computing infrastructure upon which it stands. It's creeping into every aspect of our lives, from self-driving cars to grocery lists, blurring the line between convenience and dependence. This revolution raises big questions: will AI change our jobs, our values, and even our understanding of what it means to be human? The true impact of AI isn't in the technology itself but in how it might reshape our very sense of what it means to be human -- our freedoms, our connections, and how we create meaning in a world where machines play an increasingly powerful role.

In this week's newsletter, I conclude my introduction to the big themes of "Being Human in the Age of AI," a book I am writing with Richard Russell. Key points:

💥 AI is the bleeding edge of a computing led revolution -- like the Industrial Revolution, but with algorithms instead of steam engines. It's transforming work, society, and what it even MEANS to be human.

🤔 AI is already in your pocket, picking your playlists and curating your groceries! Soon it could be your doctor, lawyer, and even driving your car (yikes!). It has both empowering potential and some serious ethical challenges to navigate.

🤯 This isn't about the tech itself; it's about how AI, as the peak of our computing infrastructure, fundamentally changes human experience. Like the printing press, it will shift our values and reshape how we understand ourselves.

So, what's it like to be human in the AI age? Our individual freedoms, so precious today, are products of their time and technology. AI could lead to whole new ways of thinking about community, collaboration, and interconnectedness. It's both unsettling and exciting.

Big Bang Theory

It’s one thing for a technology to sit quietly in a lab and another to announce itself to the world. Generative AI has gone from a specialized niche to mass deployment in less than two years. The last time a technology arrived with a bang, it was literally a bomb, the nuclear bomb. We lived in its shadow for fifty years before the Cold War ended. Like nuclear weapons, AI is based on a military-industrial complex, a vast array of technologies and organizations that serve as infrastructure. The nuclear bomb loomed as a distant, existential threat, but AI's danger is its pervasive, everyday reach. It's a technology disguised as convenience. While nuclear war remained in the hands of the powerful, AI will reshape the work of countless ordinary people. Teachers won't just worry about drills but about the very nature of what they teach. And it's not just teachers -- lawyers, drivers, insurance agents, and cooks will all see their work transformed. AI isn't a distant apocalypse but a slow-motion revolution in the way we all work.

Imagine a world where your morning commute is handled by a self-driving car you barely comprehend, your grocery list curated by an AI predicting your needs, and your workout routine optimized by a personalized fitness program. Unlike the nuclear arms race, with clear lines of control and mutually assured destruction, the AI revolution is happening in parallel on multiple fronts. Some companies want to change how legal research is done.  Others want to be virtual assistants. Some are helping us write and others speak in foreign tongues with our voice. Deep fakes can impersonate your favorite politician or your grandmother. The potential for manipulation and discrimination becomes a chilling reality. There's also a positive side to this pervasive nature. AI can be a powerful democratizing force. Educational tools can personalize learning for every student, regardless of location or socioeconomic background. Medical diagnosis, once dependent on limited expertise, can be augmented by AI, potentially saving lives in remote areas. In some cases - such as young women asking about sexuality in a patriarchal culture - AI might be the only way to answer important queries. 

This revolution, unlike that of the atom bomb, is decentralized, diffuse. It's both thrilling and terrifying, promising progress and threatening livelihoods. It whispers in algorithms that recommend the videos we watch and the articles we read, shaping our understanding of the world one subtle suggestion at a time. Its power isn't centralized in a stockpile of warheads but rather distributed across a million apps and interfaces. The question of ethics becomes a hydra, sprouting heads with unsettling speed. When your car's algorithm prioritizes your safety but might risk the lives of others, does its programming reveal a chilling mirror of our own human biases? And who bears responsibility for its errors as AI seeps into the courtroom, influencing case outcomes and legal decisions? The programmer? The corporation that profits from the algorithm? Or the judge who trusts its seemingly impartial results?

AI also promises to change our societies wholesale, upending the structures that govern society right now. The "democratization" of information the internet promised has given way to a new era where tailored disinformation runs rampant, where manufactured "truth" finds fertile ground in minds already prepped for suspicion. This isn't merely about fake news - it's about the erosion of shared reality itself, about personalized realities orchestrated by unaccountable forces. Can democracy survive an age where every citizen inhabits their personal reality? Yet, there is hope. Just as the very tools that make propaganda and deepfakes possible can also empower the marginalized, AI's reach could bridge divides. AI based image recognition might help a doctor in a remote community clinic assess whether a patient has a chronic illness and refer them to a specialist in a faraway city. AI-driven translation tools could dissolve language barriers, foster dialogue, and build empathy in a fractious world. In this complex and ever-evolving landscape, perhaps the most significant challenge is not mastering the technology but guiding its evolution with the foresight and wisdom we often lack. We remain the architects of this future.

With that thought: enough about AI! It’s a tool. I used to collect fountain pens and spent enormous amounts of time discussing the relative merits of various brands, but I never confused the pen for the hand. This book is about being human in the age of AI, not AI itself.  And just as literacy changes what it is to be human, so will AI. 

Redefining Humanity

AI sits on top of a massive computing infrastructure we have created over the last fifty years. Positive or negative, this constant, subtle influence of computing isn't just a threat or boon to humanity but a redefinition of what it is to be human in the first place. Much before the nuclear bomb, another technology made the modern world possible. I am thinking of the printing press and how it changed how we made sense of the world. When we use the term ‘humanity’ and protest the violation of human rights halfway across the world, we are being Gutenberg’s children. Widespread literacy created the appetite for news from far away and bound people across vast distances. If a nation is an imagined community, the tools for that imagination are paper and print. Novels brought the thoughts and feelings of others into our minds. Equations helped extend our minds to scales too large and too small for the eye to see. We owe those shifts in our collective understanding to the ongoing penetration of the written word. 

If we want to understand what is to be human in a literate society, focusing on writing as a technology is less important than the new culture that emerged due to widespread literacy. Similarly, thinking of AI as a 'thing,' a specific artifact, or even as a cluster of related technologies is a mistake. It's better to think of AI in the way we think of the Industrial Revolution, i.e., a historical period that upended everything: every form of work, every social class, and every political institution. The Industrial Revolution, and the modern era more generally, redefined what it is to be human by introducing new technologies into our lives and new social institutions. We live in nation-states governed by a political class and large bureaucracies while being ostensibly protected by standing armies. We work in offices and factories. We live in heated and air-conditioned homes surrounded by appliances of every sort. Modern humans live differently, love differently, and work differently from their pre-modern counterparts. Will AI precipitate an equally massive shift in the human experience?

AI as a single technology won’t change us as a species, but AI as the peak of a vast computing infrastructure: definitely. What can we expect in that brave new world? Before we get to that question, here’s a distinction I want you to pay attention to - the difference between:

1. What is a human being?

2. What is it like to be a human being?

The former can be decided by objective science, say, by defining a human being as a creature whose genome is within some standard parameters of DNA samples of our species. In contrast, what it’s like to be human has one foot in the subjective - how we experience the world and one foot in the social - how the law, the state, my community and other institutions treat me. The distinction between ‘what is a human being’ and ‘what is it like to be a human being’ is crucial since the former doesn’t depend on technological or social change while the latter does. 

What is it like to be me? At home and on the street, I experience myself as an independent adult whose choices are respected as long as they don’t interfere with others’ choices. I can get into my car and drive to California if I want. My association with others is voluntary, bound by feelings of love and care as much as social custom. Work is a little different. I don’t own the fruits of my labor; those belong to my employer. These freedoms would have been unimaginable for my pre-modern ancestors and are still alien to the lives of billions worldwide. I appreciate these freedoms and will do what it takes to protect them. But in calling them freedoms, I am imposing the value system of my age on the world around me and the worlds that preceded it. The values we hold dear are a big part of being human, but those values aren’t constant.

 

A villager from a previous era might experience my life as unbearably isolated, replacing human companionship with gadgets. And a visitor from the future might look at my desire to burn hundreds of gallons of gasoline on the way to California with disgust. If values make us human, then a shift in values is a shift in our perceived humanity. The beauty of values is that they are both deeply personal and inextricably linked to a societal context. I stand at the intersection of past and future, carrying within me centuries of evolving thought on what makes life meaningful. My freedom of movement and association, so precious to me, is ultimately shaped by the technology and social structures I was born into. Yet, I see the potential for new meanings within these confines.

My pursuit of individual autonomy is a fleeting phase of human history. Could there be a time when our tightly knit communities are reimagined globally, where a shared sense of interconnectedness drives collaboration and purpose?  The concept might feel alien now, but future humans will look back at our individualism with the same mix of pity and bewilderment that I reserve for my ancestors bound to their land and traditions. There's a temptation to believe that our current values represent the pinnacle of human potential - the ‘End of History,’ as a famous book put it - but that arrogance blinds us to the possibilities that might emerge alongside new technologies and ways of organizing society. The shift in values ushered in by AI, and technologies yet unknown could rewrite what it’s like to be human. This will be a process of loss as existing ways of thinking and being fall by the wayside. It could also be a process of expansion, where empathy, creativity, and a deeper understanding of our interconnectedness take on new dimensions. 

Parting Thoughts

AI is the culmination of mechanization and a transition into a new era of meaning-making as if the steam engine and the printing press had a baby. That’s the magic of computation: in one avatar, computing can help us make sense of the world. In another, it helps us interact with the world; in a third, it helps us shape the world to our needs. This universal machine - not in some abstract formulation, but in their concrete instantiations - will inevitably influence what it is like to be human, and we need conceptual tools to help us grasp this new phase of our collective existence. Until recently, when we desired to make sense of the world, we turned to history and literature, and sometimes psychology and philosophy. In our book, Richard and I want to add cognition to the list. Not as Cognitive Science, for that’s a laboratory discipline, but as the Cognitive Humanities, which has much to offer on what it’s like to be human.