Why the hype about AI misses the point (en)

Did you hear about Artificial Intelligence (AI)? Or about ChatGPT? Assuming you are reading this on a digital device which you paid for by being involved in this society, it is quite probable that you heard about this stuff or are even confronted with its consequences. Beside climate change and the most current war drama AI is surely one of the most discussed topics of our time. What was formerly a fascinating field for tech enthusiasts or professionals related to technology and manufacturing, with ChatGPT the topic was catapulted into the everyday life of the everyday person of our society. Either because it has severe impacts on the assumed constants of your work environment or because it will just make you obsolete. Encouraging isn't it? Or rather giving you the feeling of being left behind?

Well, good that you feel that way because you are left behind. The development of AI means that cognitive tasks can now (or soon) be automated by a machine, in the same way physical power was automated by steam engines and other mechanical machinery. It means that AI will takeover most of the jobs that our service economy is based on. Writing a policy paper, managing customer contacts, even creating posters, music and advertisements, AI can do (or will do) all of this (and much more) cheaper, incredibly faster and without any complaints around the clock. Oh and did I mention that it will become better and better and better? And not even that it will increase its learning rate exponentially. It will improve with an ever increasing speed. If you weren't worried before, I guess you are now.

This story is nothing new. If you consume mass media or watch YouTube videos of AI 'experts' this or something very similar will be the story they tell. But if this will be the future what about us human beings then? Do we have a place in a world in which mechanical and informational technology merge together into a 'supertechnology' that beats us humans in every measurable way?

I think this is the right time to pause for a moment.

Isn't this question weird? I mean as far as I can see it we are, at least cognitively, the most intelligent and powerful species on this planet. We built cities and the very technologies which we are talking about. We decide which profession to take and whom to live with. But when it comes to the topic of AI and the future of society it seems that we are not in charge anymore. It seems that the future is not about us but... About what? Efficiency, power, profit? It seems the only thing that matters is that more is done with less effort. I don't know whether you have read Michael Ende's story of "Momo" but I have the feeling we have a lot of "grey men" working on our future according to their aims. The real and only important question concerning AI and its development in the future is not, what it will be capable of, or how it will change us. Because actually, there is no AI. AI is not alive. There is no man inside the machine, no subject with original intentions, no will. The only question that matters is: How do WE want to live? What do WE want to do?

Whatever we answer to this question AI might be helpful with achieving this, it might not. But it all does not matter if we do not take responsibility for our dreams, for our very own lives. This is what matters most in these turbulent and confusing times. Becoming the author and designer our our own lives.

Anybody who thinks and says that AI is shaping the future of the world is just hiding his own (possibly unconscious) intentions behind the complicated veil of artificial intelligence. It is interesting to look at people talking about AI from this perspective.

There is another myth about AI that I want to address. It is a myth I used in this very blog post when laid out my initial description of an AI-dominated future. This myth is that AI is better than human beings in what it does and that it will substitute humans.

Now, this believe is based on the idea that what makes a performance or work 'better' than another is its objective value or perfection or power. For example the proportional and perspective perfection of a picture or the intellectual sophistication of a piece of writing. But life is not about the objective power or the perfection of work done but about the individual soul that expresses itself through the work.

Like a child drawing sketches the value of the picture does not lay in its artistic finesse, not in an 'objective' assessment. It is valuable (for the child and its environment) because the child has made it. It is an expression of the everlasting mystery of that particular soul, it's an expression of who the child is as a human being. Naturally, the child will be drawn to increase its skill, to learn to achieve mastery. But this is not because objective perfection counts but because mastery means the possibility for more direct and more detailed expression of the self. It is a result of the child's curiosity about itself. The value of a product always depends on the emotional relationship to its creator. It is always personal, always subjective. The product is fascinating, valuable because it is a manifestation of the soul that created it. It is our access to that soul. The individual, the soul is what matters, not the product.

Thus, however 'useful' AI might seem for us (or even be) in an utilitarian sense, in the end it is completely uninteresting. Boring and meaningless in the most extreme sense of the word. There is nobody inside the machine that we could learn anything about by perceiving its creation. AI just melds everything that it was fed with together in one big data configuration. If anything, it is a representation of the average of the logical data of the work it was fed. Rather than giving space for an individual to show itself to the world, AI is actually hiding the individual in the grey cloud of normalization.

In the end, AI is for humans what the pencil is for the artist that wants to draw a picture. It is a tool to bring to life his internal vision. First there needs to be the openness for internal images to arise and only then one can let it become reality with the help of the pencil. The pencil on its own will just lay there on the empty sheet of paper doing nothing. It does not have what it takes to become an artist, the dreams, the fear, the courage. It is not a human being, just a tool. AI is just like that. It is a pencil, a very complex pencil yes, but still a pencil. And a pencil draws the picture that its holder wants to create. So the emotional relationship towards ourselves (and our creations) is what we should focus on. In what world do we want to live? What wants to come out of ourselves and become manifest in the world? If we are in touch with this original vision of ours, AI might become useful for us as a tool in realizing it, it might not. But before that it is just useless electronic scrap, cold and dead, taking away energy and space.