Let’s face it, as the world in which we live becomes increasingly more ‘digital’, it’s starting to get more difficult to tell what is ‘real’. Artificial Intelligence can write books, paint pictures, and even read an X-Ray better than a human. Before long, you’re going to wonder about every piece of video footage you see, wondering if it’s real, or just another ‘deep-fake’ designed to sway your opinion into hating someone, or supporting a particular point of view.
It’s like we are going back in time.
200 years ago, people could only really trust what they actually saw occurring with their own eyes, and even then they could be fooled. In the very near future, who you can trust, and who you connect with, is going to be called into question. As a species, we’re moving into a future that we cannot fully trust, and living in a time where we have never been more connected, and yet have never been more apart.
Before long, we’re going to recognize just how much value there is in ‘being human’.
Because as much as technology is trying to replace everything (and everyone), the truth of who we are as people is that in almost all of us, there is a deep desire and need to connect with another human being. Not with a piece of software, not with a simulation of who we are, but someone organic, with a history and future, a value all of their own.
If the last three years have taught us anything, it’s that we as a species need each other.
And I’ve come to believe that part of that need is a feeling of being accepted, or at least noticed, by something of your own kind. Because even an evolved machine intelligence cannot bestow upon you the same sense of acceptance and appreciation that a human being can. No matter how many power cycles an artificial intelligence has been through, it’s never been through the shared background and the shared fears of another human being.
As the world around us becomes more synthetic, I think we’re going to start to understand the value of the real.
Whether or not this means we going to start treating each other more kindly… I think that the jury is still out on that. What I’m hopeful for is a greater sense of appreciation of each other. Maybe, just maybe, in the midst of all that isn’t, that which is will finally be elevated to the place that should always been.
Because once we understand the real value of a human life, hopefully we will start treating everyone else, and ourselves, with the respect and kindness that we have always deserved.
I think part of it is the human desire to create and strive for perfection with all the imperfections that we have built-in. Sure a machine might paint a beautiful picture, but I don’t think it will ever move us the way we can be moved by seeing a painting done by human being. I once described art as the desire to create perfect from the imperfect, and I think that imperfection is a vital part of what makes us human.
The antiseptic perfection of machines is never going to move us in the same way.
Sure it might take us a while, as our fascination with the simulation of what it means to be human will grow, but eventually I think we will come to the understanding that life is about connection, and relationships. Not with a machine designed to emulate and meet your every desire, but the messy, difficult and honestly sometimes frustrating nature of the relationships to which we aspire.
As human beings, we need challenges to overcome in order to have a sense of meaning, of progress. The easier the simulated world becomes, the more we will crave the difficulty of being with each other.
In the end, I think we will find a balance between the digital and the real, but it’s going to be a roller coaster getting there. Hopefully one day in the not too distant future all of the technology in the world will be focused not on enslaving, isolating or destroying each other, but in lifting each other up, and enriching the experience of what it means to be human.
So that we might understand each other, and find peace on our journey together.
Because we are all looking for something, and I think it’s a sense that we mean something, that we belong, and that there is some sense of purpose to be gained in every breath, in every heartbeat. So far, human life is the most intelligent form of life that we know of in the entire universe. Sure it can be messy, sure it can be difficult, but there’s nothing else like it.
And we should cherish every single day we have of being human.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings