Why are we betting our future on synthetic intelligence when the downsides of doing so are so apparent and profound and doubtlessly irreversible?
We’re at a crossroads in human historical past; we will proceed to comply with the present path in the direction of larger and deeper technological dependence and give up to the results of this alternative. Or we will determine to chart a radically totally different course.
We are able to – nonetheless – select to chorus from diving headfirst into this AI experiment on human consciousness. We are able to determine that doesn’t do what we all know we in a position to do. As individuals who basically wish to be blissful and don’t wish to undergo, we will select to not be seduced and hypnotized by the joy, greed and competitiveness of the tech wizards of Silicon Valley.
As a psychotherapist and interfaith minister, I can say with certainty that know-how, in the best way we use it, has turn out to be an impediment to our total happiness and well-being. Know-how is critically harming younger folks’s capability to attach with one another and luxuriate in themselves. The surgeon basic has decided that youth psychological well being is “the defining well being disaster of our time.” And but we proceed ahead – accelerating quicker and more durable alongside the identical path, committing extra fiercely to AI because the superb answer to life.
Why will we proceed to throw ourselves into what’s going to absolutely be an existential disaster for our society? Why are we giving up our autonomy and agreeing to be dominated by a technological wizard who would not perceive or care that we people take pleasure in good lives – a wizard very like HAL the pc envisioned by Stanley Kubrick in his prophetic 1968 movie “2001: A Area Odyssey.”
We proceed within the identify of what we name “progress”, which we outline as that which creates extra effectivity, is extra productive, reduces prices and in the end generates income. So too, “progress” is what permits us to do much less, removes some life duties, and guarantees to make issues simpler and quicker. The tip aim, or so it appears, is to turn out to be passengers in our personal lives, even when it is a digital Frankenstein driving the bus.
The issue, nonetheless, is that our definition of “progress” and obsession with pursuing it advantages solely a small variety of folks, those that additionally reap monumental monetary rewards and energy from this technique.
What if happiness and well-being have been what we pursued, thought of “progress” and designed our societies round? What if our aim as a society was to create life for its members, a life we take pleasure in and wish to stay in? What if we centered on our expertise of residing as an alternative of an concept of ”progress” that makes so many individuals not wish to stay? Can we alter at this stage of the evolutionary sport – redefine “progress” in order that it means studying to be okay the place we’re, not all the time having to maneuver ahead at epic velocity, and chorus from chasing each alternative, no matter whether or not it’s good for us or whether or not we even need it?
Regardless of all we all know and instantly expertise with know-how, the way it impacts and harms our kids, and regardless of our society’s multi-generational epidemic of tension, loneliness and melancholy, we however proceed to push ahead, double down on know-how – and go after what we will assume up, just because we in a position to Give it some thought. We do that whatever the value, providing our lives and ourselves as kindling within the fireplace we name “progress”.
We can not abandon well-being and happiness as objectives for our society, and we can not give up management of our lives to an AI wizard simply because it tells us that we should always and shall be good for us. What extra do we have to know, or uncover, in an effort to step off this practice of relentless “progress”, to take our foot off the accelerator and reassess what we actually need, what actually issues to us as human beings, and the way will we design (and stay) our lives?