Saying Hi to Ai.
Developing artificial intelligence without stretching our human intelligence will dilute the essence of being human.
AI has captured our imagination, aspirations, and desires. Yet, it’s far from fulfilling our dreams. In fact, in our specific moment in history, AI could easily evolve into a nightmare.
While AI excels at non-critical, labor-intensive tasks (NCLIT), it’s still a considerable distance from performing critical, complex, mindfulness-intensive tasks (CCMIT). Herein lies my real concern: the potential impact of AI on our creativity.
And I have solid grounds for this concern. Consider the effects social networks have had on our sociability, and how digital authorities, combined with unleashed markets, turn us into libertarian automatons.
Everywhere I look, AI is hailed as the messiah of instant capacity. Sora will produce a movie for us, based on a script written by ChatGPT. Gemini will author our books and articles, Claude will summarize them, DALL-E will paint our pictures, and Midjourney will craft our customer journeys, which will then be fed back to all of the above to write a manual for revolutionary business services to battle depression, loneliness, age, and wrinkles. This isn’t creativity; it’s the equivalent of feeling artistic after visiting a gallery shop, which is probably experienced through the lens of a Vision Pro.
Consumer-driven creativity is vastly different from craft-based creativity.
The former depends on service providers to fulfill our imaginations — a product of being, not just saying. Without craft-based creativity, our imagination conforms to the variety of catalogues available. This is particularly dangerous when those catalogues are created from the creativity of past years, rather than future aspirations.
Sure, it’s fun to have some minions creating nice things for us. Look, this text is presented to you after being edited and proofed by a few neural networks. But this remains within the realm of non-critical, labor-intensive tasks. It’s not born from a prompt; it’s born of human concerns, frustrations, considerations, contemplations, and even condemnations. It’s a child of human intelligence.
What is human intelligence, and why is it so important in the age of AI?
Human intelligence is the capacity for logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, planning, creativity, and systemic accountability. It enables us to navigate the complexities of our world, understand its nuances, and create meaningful change. In the age of AI, human intelligence stands as our bastion against the homogenization of thought and creativity. It ensures that innovation is not merely a regurgitation of what’s been done but a leap into the unknown, driven by unique human experiences and insights.
In fact, artificial intelligence needs human intelligence and insights to become smarter and train better.
As we stand on the cusp of a new era, it’s crucial to remember the value of human intelligence in complementing AI’s capabilities. Rather than viewing AI as a replacement for human creativity and intelligence, we should see it as a tool that can augment our abilities. And augmenting means something is there to begin with.
Without human intelligence, the following is almost certain:
1. We will become less free and more dependent on external powers.
2. We will develop the cynicism that comes with buying and not doing.
3. We will continue to neglect the most vital part of our wisdom and mindfulness: the bridge between emotions and mechanics.
And when the bridge between emotions and mechanics is broken, no one will be there to cross the Nile, and train AI with human mindfulness and sensitivities. The world will become the worst form of bureaucracy imaginable.
In a world increasingly mediated by AI, safeguarding the uniqueness of human creativity becomes paramount. We must resist the allure of convenience that AI offers and strive to maintain the depth, complexity, and unpredictability of human thought. If you are asking yourself how, read my next article on human neuroplasticity at scale to recognize that the future can not just be amazing but also spiritually, humanly, and intellectually meaningful.
Only by enhancing our humanity at the speed and scale of AI can we ensure that the future we’re building is not just one of efficiency and convenience but also of diversity, creativity, and genuine innovation.
So, is AI going to illuminate human intelligence or extinguish it completely?
It depends on what sort of creativity will be practiced to encounter the age of accelerated change, induced fakery, overwhelming biases, and automated humanity.
We must be smarter than packaged technologies and invisible hands. We need to discover things by being sharp, mindful, communicative, and collaborative. To truly enjoy the future of AI, we need to greet it with human intelligence.
We must say Hi to AI.
Yorai Gabriel is the author of The Innovators’ Drama, an essay on mindful and strategic creativity during the fuzzy, messy, and murky stages of innovation development.