What if AI is the best that could have happened to us?
The negativity towards AI is constantly rising. We both love it and dread it, to be precise. We think of it as being the ultimate solution to human error and something that will destroy humanity. But what if it’s actually the best thing we could have developed, only we still need to learn HOW to use it (and by ‘how’ I don’t mean the actual command adjustment)? Before we get to that part, however, let’s take a look at AI and its connotations with the dystopian visions and their origin to find out what we really are afraid of. If you think the fear is something new – it’s time to change your mind.
When it all started
We’ve been prophesying the end of our species for a pretty long time now. It is often understood as a form of punishment for being irresponsible creators. You may think it all started during the industrial era, but it’s much older than that. If we bend the idea just a little, we can even extend it toward Prometheus, who stole fire (innovation) from the gods and was punished for giving it to humans. There also exists a version of the Golem story where the man-made creature turned against its creators. So what flourished during the industrial era starting with Frankenstein, of course, in 1818, and continues to this day – now taking AI as its target – is actually much older and rooted deeper.
There are also many versions of the vision of our demise. There is the thread that started with E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops (1909), which is an early vision of a society that lives underground, entirely dependent on a machine that eventually fails. This is a thread that is still alive – if it rings your The Matrix connotation bell, you are right to think that.
There is also the dystopian and authoritarianism vision where there may not be a typical machine takeover per se, but there is technocracy, control, and loss of individuality. The earliest piece here is Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (1924), which imagines a future where people are numbered, live in glass houses, and are surveilled constantly. Does it sound like Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World? Good – it should. It can also sound a bit like Metro 2033, a post-apocalyptic Russian novel set in a society living underground, if you’re into that kind of literature.
As technology advanced, so did our fears—shifting from myth and machine to algorithms and artificial minds. Post-WWII and the Cold War era produced not only the Bond series (and many a superhero). It also created its own version of the dystopian forecast due to the rise in robotics and early computing. Think: Asimov’s robot stories (1940s–50s), introducing the Three Laws of Robotics – trying to solve the problem of machines harming humans. Also, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) gives us HAL-9000, a machine that “thinks” and kills to protect its mission.
Finally, the 80s and 90s is the time when dystopia merges with the digital. Neuromancer (1984) by William Gibson and The Matrix (1999) explore a world where machines have already taken over – and humans don’t even notice. This is likely the most scary vision – where we have no control but also are not aware of it, so unable to fight back…
Although to me The Matrix was always the modern example of ‘fin de siècle’ with its symbolism and the uncertain vision of the future, it also touches our deepest fear. The one which is not only about losing control, consciousness, or freedom, but also about the subsequent death or annihilation.
What we are afraid of
Yes, as a species, we are still afraid to die. Like all other creatures inhabiting Earth, we want to survive. This fear often takes the form of taking over control – or trying to control the uncontrollable. As kids, we often learn that staying close and being accepted by our tribe (i.e., our caretakers) is vital to our survival, so we do what we can to win others’ approval in order to stay safe.
When this mechanism is solidified, we associate losing control with becoming unsafe. And unfortunately, the vision of our own creations taking over from us, disobeying us, and ‘thinking on their own’ hits that very same soft spot. So we are not afraid of AI per se, but of what it can bring us – i.e., death.
But death is not the only fear that drives us. We are also afraid of ourselves. So what happens in those stories is a projection of our human flaws onto our creations. We tend to imagine them with our worst traits – unstoppable ambition, aggression, and deception – only amplified. As humans, we are never just good or just bad. But we try to pretend we are better than we are, suppressing our socially unacceptable traits so that we look good on the outside. And the machines from our dystopian visions (now also AI) turn this whole concept inside out – showing the bad on the outside and the good being hidden. Which brings me to the idea that it’s not AI we are afraid of but the negative traits of our own.
Lastly, we don’t trust ourselves to be wise creators. The theme of hubris – that classic tragic flaw – runs through all of these visions, starting from Frankenstein and likely never ending. We suspect that we’re better at making things than knowing why we make them. Which actually might be very true. Just it doesn’t have to stop us from thinking about the why.
Why AI might be the best we could have done
For years, we’ve been developing ideas that could potentially make things easier for us. With the industrial era, we got rid of the manual work, gradually shifting towards more thinking jobs and more creative tasks. However, as a result, we also do less of the work that allows us to touch, explore, and experience things other than keyboards or to focus deeply during the process and see the results of what we do. Now, we are developing AI that can shift it even further, creating a sort of a meta-work with us only overseeing the actual creative and thinking process. This has a huge potential, but only if we see it as such.
This brings me to the whole idea for this post, which was so kindly gifted to me by a friend to work on and make public. (Anna – thank you.) Because what if this time we are wiser than we were in the 1800s? What if this time we can make it work for us? And by ‘for us’, I mean to actually make us happier.
There is so much research that says that what actually makes us feel better are connections with other human beings – flawed as we are. 😉 I don’t have to cite anything here – just google it. Gemini will tell you it’s true. 😉 There is also research that says that when we see the positive impact of what we do on other people, we also feel better (e.g., https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2021.1897867, https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AFPTSI0/). This does not necessarily have to be work; it can be supporting the community, volunteering, or helping a family member. Last but not least, we can lower anxiety by… performing manual work, which can also serve as a form of simple meditation https://doi.org/10.1145/3567564 (have you ever tried gardening or woodwork as a calming technique by solely focusing on what you’re doing? If not – do try.)
AI has the potential to actually limit the amount of time we spend at our desks, doing work that doesn’t bring us any closer to our overall well-being – the work that we see no positive or tangible effects of. So instead of shifting work to yet another level of abstraction, we can potentially take our time back. And when we do, why not put it into something that actually makes us healthier?… Like spending more time with others, building stronger relationships, giving something to the community, and… spending time on creating things that have a form and a shape. And yes, it requires economical changes, like those discussed for decades (the minimal guaranteed wages). Another thing that needs to happen is our own internal mental shift to separate our right to live (i.e., the right to medical care, food, and security) from the actual work we do. The latter might be the toughest change to implement, as we’ve been strengthening this concept for centuries. But if we don’t question the status quo, it will never change.
So instead of foreseeing the end of our world, we could actually focus on making the right changes. Like disconnecting the progress from doing more of what doesn’t serve us. Otherwise, we may not necessarily wake up one day with no sunlight and just grey skies but we may end up as unhappy as we’ve never been before.
