How to Live with Robots
Dedicated to: WmIII
The robots are coming for us. I do not think this is bad news.
We don’t know how the AI revolution will play out – how it will evolve or in what ways it will change the landscape. We don’t even know exactly what this alien technology is. We know it is extremely powerful and getting stronger every day (a line from the Bhagavad Gita springs inevitably to mind). There is justifiable fear and concern. But I think the future possibilities are almost all optimistic. And wherever the wind blows, our responsibility is largely the same.
If, like me, you have been wondering how AI will develop and what we should do with it, here are some thoughts:
Dystopia
For decades, humans have feared the rise of robots, and for good reason. Robots and AI are better than any individual at an increasing number of tasks, threatening to push humans out of jobs and spheres of influence. What today is a better janitor, programmer, and surgeon may tomorrow be a better scientist, politician, soldier, and teacher. What happens if this technology becomes stronger and smarter than its creator and takes over the world?
Humans have not always been the apex predator on Earth. We had to fight our way to this privileged position, and frankly we made rather a hash of it. It’s time we let someone else take a turn. Even if robots take over in the most dramatic scenario, it doesn’t necessitate the end of humanity. Just because we may no longer be at the top of the food chain, doesn’t mean we are extinct. People built and run New York City, but there are still rats in it. And who’s to say in the cosmic sense, whether New York City belongs to the people or the rats? In a world of robots, there will still be people.
You may argue that humans managed to cause the extinction of quite a few species during our reign, and robots may return the favor. Maybe, but my money is on us. We are adaptable, fiercely determined, and have the capacity for abstract thought, spirituality, and love. Who knows how far these forces may yet take us? Life finds a way.
Utopia
On the other hand, Buckminster Fuller and Jeremy Rifkin (among others) have an almost messianic view of technology. They predict it will effectively do all the things humans have been doing so incompetently for centuries. AI may take our jobs, but will also take our need for jobs. Earth will run itself and we will be free to do… whatever it is citizens of a utopia do. It’s a nice thought, but there is an ancient warning in our mythology.
In the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11, people sought to become god through technological advancement. They almost made it, but at the last minute God intervened, and humanity was thrown quite literally back into the Stone Age. Every time we get close, an extinction event returns us to start.
I don’t know why we are prevented from finishing the Tower of Babel. But I trust the gods. Our job is to roll the stone up the hill, and the stone’s job is to roll back down. We are forever frustrated and tortured by this futility. But I wonder if we are actually being protected from the cosmic tragedy of what would happen if we made it to the top.
The Tower of Babel is almost rebuilt, but it may soon be torn down again. Maybe the robots will tear it down. Maybe it will be a supervolcano, or meteor, or any of the countless threats we have miraculously avoided thus far. In any case, we will be hunting and gathering again before you know it. That’s okay. We’ve walked this ground before and we will walk it again.
A Small Revolution
But I doubt AI will usher in either dystopia or utopia.
Suppose we create a robot that can sink a basketball from anywhere on the court with 100% accuracy. It would be a better basketball player than Steph Curry, but it wouldn’t take his job. We don’t watch sports to see athletic perfection, but to see humans strive and either achieve or fail. It’s the human story in miniature. It’s interesting to watch robots battle each other, but it’s spellbinding to watch Muhammad Ali box. He did what no robot could do: he showed us what we have it in us to accomplish.
The same is true of art. The Starry Night is not inherently interesting. What makes it compelling is a poor Dutch artist saw the world in a way no one else ever had, and by applying pigment to canvas, gave us eyes to see. We can listen to music from the comfort of home, but we pay thousands of dollars to go to a Taylor Swift concert, endure the heat, and listen to bad acoustics reverberate through an arena. Why? We do it for the privilege of standing witness to what a human can do when she devotes her life to craft. We will be impressed by AI art for a time, but eventually the novelty will wear off and we will go back to the symphony or The Met to see what humans can do.*
The fact is, humans are more interested in humans than in AI. It’s why we are trying to make AI more like humans and less like AI. It doesn’t matter if robots can do human things better than humans can. They are not us, and so they can not replace us. We need people more than we realize.
This is not the first technological revolution to promise imminent salvation or damnation. Many inventions have caused widespread moral panic, but in hindsight they routinely underdeliver. Trains did not cause passengers to suffocate and televisions did not cause illiteracy. Every invention changed the ecosystem in unpredictable ways, but humans adapted as we always do. We learned how to use the new technology and how not to.
Our Responsibility
So how should we use it? I don’t mean this in the collective sense. How humanity should use AI is no doubt important, but forces larger than me will determine this. I’m more interested in the personal question: how are we as individuals to interact with AI?
In these strange and uneasy times, I miss visionaries like Albert Einstein and David Bowie to show us the way. Even those alive today who have the requisite vision and integrity, Brit Marling or The Edge (who is from the future), are mysteriously quiet.
But there are two things that come to mind, and they are not changed by any of the future scenarios:
The first is hindsight. How we wish we handled the past can indicate how we are to face the future.
As a ‘90s kid, the early 2000s hold a special place in my heart. It was like the Roaring Twenties resurrected itself in a crop top and low-rise jeans. Pervading everything was an unshakable atmosphere of fun where life was a party, politics was a joke, and bedrooms were shrines to the holy trinity: Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Lindsay Lohan.
Of course, none of this is true. This is the product of nostalgia’s forgiving glow. In the 2000s, I was an over-serious, introverted, pseudo-intellectual party-pooper. I did not listen to Britney Spears, I thought Paris Hilton was the punchline of a bad joke, and I didn’t know who Lindsay Lohan was because I was too busy watching black and white movies from the 1940s. I thought cell phones would cause cancer and if America didn’t grow up, we were all going to hell in a Prada purse.
I wish I had handled it differently. I’m glad I was passionate about responsibility and personal growth. But I wish I had also lightened up and enjoyed what was happening around me. I look around me now, and I don’t like much of what I see. But I imagine nostalgia will forgive even the 2020s. And if it does, how will I wish I lived? Maybe I should start living that way now. Be present in the age I’m in, wade into the cultural current – not so far that I drown – but far enough to play and enjoy it. Looking back, I’ll be glad I did.
The second thing is intentionality.
Social media may be the closest thing we have to AI and provide some insight into how we want to use it. There are many valid and creative uses for social media, but these are the rules that currently work best for the lifestyle I’m trying to cultivate:
1) Be disciplined in allowing it to take up only as much time and attention as I want it to.
2) It can be a powerful tool for finding and cultivating lifestyle aesthetic and reenforcing beliefs, so use it to digest the content I want. Block out the rest.
3) It’s an opportunity to speak to those who care to listen, so use it to create and share content that may be useful (art, humor, inspiration, etc.).
I imagine when it comes to AI, the answers will be similar and simple. Live in the present the way I wish I had lived in the past. Find the ways in which AI facilitates what I’m trying to do; lean into those and ignore the rest.
Technology never changes human nature. Depending on how we use it, it’s a tool that can either help or hinder our ability to do what we were put here to do. But our job remains the same. I think this is why Brit Marling and The Edge have not told us what to do. They are too busy doing their job. C.S. Lewis wrote, “How are we to live in an atomic age? I am tempted to reply: Why as you would have lived in the sixteenth century…”
The robots are coming for us. May they find us doing our job.
J.
*This raises questions like, “Does the artist create the painting or does the paintbrush? And how is this any different from AI creating a painting if AI was created by humans?” This is a labyrinth of moral landmines, populated with an unknown number of chickens and eggs, and while I think these questions are worth exploring, they are not ones I am particularly interested in answering. It’s just turtles all the way down.
April 17, 2023
Addendum (Dec. 24, 2023): Leave it to Brit Marling to do both. She is doing her job, but as anyone fortunate enough to watch A Murder at the End of the World can attest, she has also provided a light in the darkness to show us the way.