What does it mean to be a human in the age of AI
The tech sector is buzzing with excitement for generative AI. The conversations amongst techies are centered around “how do we integrate AI in our product?” On the other hand voices of alarm are also being raised by influential people such as Steve Wozniak, Elan Musk and Geoffrey Hinton who is considered a pioneer of AI. Hinton fears,
“AI’s potential to eliminate jobs and create a world where many will not be able to know what is true anymore.” At the 2021 commencement of IIT Mumbai he said, “AI will boost healthcare while also creating opportunities for lethal autonomous weapons.I find this prospect much more immediate and much more terrifying than the prospect of robots taking over, which I think is a very long way off.” (Hinton 2021)
I am not surprised either by the enthusiasm of the tech sector nor the panic about the consequences. The outcomes of human curiosity, imagination and creativity have, since we first discovered fire, had both positive and dire consequences.
The father of nuclear energy Albert Einstein once said,
“The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”. (Einstein 1945)
Einstein believed that the future consequences of human creativity will depend not on what we build but on how we think individually and collectively about why we need what we build and how we harness these innovations for the larger good.
I have dedicated my last three decades of work to the cause of participatory design. In this endeavor I have learned to harness collective imagination for the sake of collective good and making people mindful of the consequence of their decisions and actions.
I do take the destructive potential of AI very seriously. At the same time I am a believer that by influencing. how the creators and consumers of AI think can we can create safety guards around human way of being.
In this effort dialogue is critical. We need to organize community dialogue in which creators and consumers can develop a new social imagination of living with AI and at the same time not compromise what it means to be human.
I moderated an online dialogue with a group of curious and concerned individuals yesterday sponsored by the service Design College, Barcelona.
We used a Miro board as a platform for capturing meditations and ideas. The purpose was to discuss the challenges and opportunities for balancing human consciousness and artificial intelligence. I will process all the insights captured on the board and write another blog in a week or so. The importance of having such a dialogue can be understood by the response of one of the participants who wrote to me after the session,
“I was very sorry to arrive late, but it was the middle of a day work and I couldn’t make it! I only listened the last 15 min and took so many notes 😀. You have a very beautiful way of seeing people!
I recently discovered Service Design and UX. I’ve been fascinated by it ever since. I believe that empathy and human interactions are the reason why we live in this earth. But along the way I’ve found a lot of people that use these methodologies only to grow their business, and to extract information that allows them to design in a manipulative way. Like an evolution of Marketing but based on more inside information… It’s very refreshing to find someone really interested in improving peoples lives!! And that’s why I say it’s a beautiful way!
Sometimes I get a little scared because I feel unprepared, Like I don’t have theory enough or experience enough. Even though I’ve been working for 15 years. Hearing you talk reminded me that the most important things even a child can do. That is to actively listen, and to allow ourselves to be transformed according to what we hear from others. I think that’s pretty special!
People are so afraid of not leaving their own mark in life that they spend a lot of time marking everything and screaming very loud. They miss the opportunities where they can mark others, and believe that only then you will have a meaning!” (Joanna Lima Villas)
This response brought goosebumps to me. It reaffirmed my faith in the value of a dialogue. It encouraged me to continue community engagements beyond the boundaries of professional projects aimed at generating profits for my clients and delivering value to the consumers.
I look forward to more such dialogues. If you find value in the power of dialogue in averting dire consequences of our tech innovations, then let us come together sometime soon.
