Beyond the Algorithm: Human Individuality in the Age of AI

Cultural Perspectives on Individualism

In our “Western” culture, individualism is taught, prized, and monitored by law to give the impression that anything goes according to one’s will as long as it does not harm oneself or others. In other cultures, this laissez-faire approach is refused to provide a collective grasp of one’s behavior as affecting all else and reflecting poorly if it is offensive to oneself and close family.

Development of Individual Identity

The development of a sense of being an individual begins at birth, in collecting information and adjusting behavior as experience finds easier, better, more tolerable ways to conduct oneself. The socializing of children by exposing them to social and experiential situations of play, work, and learning provides guidance and practice to be skilled for future decision-making. Twelve years of free education is critical for a functioning society to integrate malleable behavior to meet society’s needs, wants, and desires.

Philosophical Perspectives on Individuality

Aristotle said that ‘becoming an individual’ is accidental as reality offers experience by demand or choice. In contrast, more recent thinkers posit an ontological approach of selecting and working with all kinds of information to develop a pattern that functions ideally without or with little stress for the person. Learning allows one to satisfy needs, wants, and desires without concerns for one’s health, safety, projects, and goals in life by themselves.

The Role of Emotions in Decision Making

The safeguards to decision-making are the emotions that express a ‘neediness’ to acquire more or different information and/or understand a situation based on a person’s background. The static mentality of being self-reliant involves using what one has, whereas a self-sufficient posture leaves open the humility to acquire more salient information to make a decision. More learning.

Maturation of Individualism

The development of individualism eventually matures into a personality that gives others a hint at the person’s capacities to contribute or alter an interaction. The crux of the problem is the identity of the person solving a problem with insight and experience as guidance, with an emotional balance to overcome difficulties and establish themselves as competent, civilized, and moral in their behavior and activities.

Artificial Intelligence vs. Human Individuality

Can Artificial Intelligence create or replicate true individualism? If AI can learn through experience, it still represents a closed circle expanding, rather than an individual being able to experiment and add to the store of what is known, which is ignoring some boundaries and allowing human curiosity and capacity to risk.

The Value of Human Talent

Does a verified human have a talent that is still more valuable than regurgitating the past? Should that be valued more distinctly in our education and merit system to allow the satisfaction of each person a useful existence? For those who cannot or will not for any reason, should they still be given a chance at something that gives an opportunity without blemish?

The human condition is not fixed in the past but modified continually, albeit slowly at times, to the demands of the future.