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Will AI make us exactly that – only artificially intelligent?
Most of us have tested what ChatGPT or other forms of AI can achieve. And many are mesmerized about the possibilities. One starts to think what the other side of the coin looks like; as in anything else, there’s sure to be one.
There are of course the legitimate privacy and security concerns, but what comes to mind – even without help from AI – is the potentially detrimental effect on one’s ability to comprehend content. Why? Because, if you leave content production to somebody else, for example ChatGPT, at the same time you make the decision to use your brain and creativity less than before. So although a big benefit of AI has been argued to be that by performing the more mundane tasks, it will enable us to allocate our time better, freeing us humans to use our time more creatively, is that really so? In fact, the fearful outcome might be that you stop using your brain for thinking and creating almost totally. And we, the lords of creation will be the servants to greater and unpredictable powers. Scary as hell!
A consequent potential path of development is that AI will become even more artificial – or no intelligence at all, if the readers or other recipients of information lose their capability to read, understand and absorb it. And that threat certainly exists only – and essentially – because in many cases, those readers have produced no content themselves for a very long time. If you don’t create yourself, will it not become more difficult to understand what has been created by others – including AI? When you don’t use it, you tend to lose it.
Darwin’s masterwork introduced the scientific theory that populations evolve over the course of generations through a process of natural selection. How does AI change ‘natural’? How strong natural elements does AI possess? What heritable and genetic elements are there? How will the human population at large evolve in the age of artificial intelligence?
For example, if students and other people in their youth rely excessively on the intelligence of machines, how can they learn to control the output those machines produce? The downhill trend in the PISA results on the part of Finland could well be proof of this.
Learning to master any skill requires repetition, the boring phase of having to do it again and again. On the other hand, as a species, we humans tend to be lazy. AI enables you to create passable content with minimal effort, so what does that mean for your own brain? Will you actually “learn” your subject?
