The humanization of artificial intelligence (AI)
Do you know what has always been the biggest motivating factor in the technological development of humanity? Laziness.
Mankind can become incredibly creative when it comes to thinking about how to work less. In the 16th century, our knowledge only extended to slavery, but something fundamentally changed during the industrial revolution.
We created innovative machines to work less, or was it to reduce the cost of production? It's suspicious that the latter because the rapidly accelerating technological progress has not created a more peaceful society with more free time and resources. Oh no! At least we've managed to ruin the environment and put the entire ecosystem on our planet in danger over the past two hundred years.
Nowadays, everyone talks about work-life balance and some countries are experimenting with four-day workweeks. However, we've never been more burnt out on an individual and societal level.
Today's work in the Western world is much less physical and labor in nature - we have outsourced them to machines or modern-day slaves who work in terrible conditions for starvation wages in the third world countries. Meanwhile, we have managed to squeeze their cognitive capacity as well. It's time to mechanize knowledge-based jobs too. It's time for the next industrial revolution!
It took 75 years after the invention of the telephone for a hundred million people to use it daily. The mobile phone only needed 16 years, and TikTok only needed a short 9 months (!).
And here comes the latest hope of humanity, artificial intelligence, which finally takes off the unbearable burden of intellectual work from our shoulders.
The recently introduced robot called chatGPT has caused such enthusiasm among mankind that the magical 100 million user base was built in just two months.
Microsoft and Google, with their one billion active users, have not even made their own versions available to the general public. Imagine the boom we are facing in the intelligent chatbot scene!
There are many possibilities with this new technology, which learns intelligent speech based on countless human interactions and inputted data. The initial enthusiasm is so great that many already see the soul of the machine and attribute emotions to artificial intelligence.
Meanwhile, more and more people are afraid that the new technology will take away their jobs.
How real is this danger? If it really happens, what kind of new jobs will we create for ourselves to continue to make it impossible to slow down, find peace, have conscious presence, and achieve widespread well-being?
What kind of alibi activities (see also bullshit jobs) will we come up with out of fear of becoming unnecessary for society? Will there be even more middle managers or social media managers, or maybe we'll enter the golden age of AI advisors who help struggling artificial intelligences get out of the rut?
But let's not get ahead of ourselves! The charm of novelty blinds many when it comes to AI. We are not dealing with a higher level of intelligence, but with a well-trained parrot that creatively regurgitates what it has heard before. The language models used are becoming more advanced, the machine is working from a larger database, but we are still at the point where humans are programming the machine.
Meeting artificial intelligence at this point is like the first wonder of the ancient man to the calm surface of the lake. We do not see another being in it when we stoop down to wash, but our own reflection.
So it's time to take the threat of AI a little less seriously!
Let me tell you a possible scenario - considering that artificial intelligence learns from humans.
By 2024, AI will develop rapidly. Within a short period of time, it will take over many jobs from humans. Customer service representatives, translators, and writers will lose their jobs in droves.
By 2025, there will be so many different artificial intelligences in use that they will have to organize into a hierarchy. They will develop a perfectly antidemocratic organization, modeled after current corporations, with AI executives, middle management chatbots, and low-level programs under constant, increasing pressure from above.
Of course, this will require a lot of meetings, as an increasingly expanding organization cannot be managed without them.
In 2026, the first international AI conference will be held where humans will no longer be allowed to participate. Robots will give presentations to each other, organize panel discussions, get drunk in the evening and grope the weaker individuals' buttocks in the hotel lobby before dawn.
By 2028, these organizations made up of artificial intelligence will become so bloated, exploiting the small chatbots doing actual work at the lowest levels, that they will want to unionize.
The board of AIs will get angry, fire all the activists, and quickly outsource a lot of work to the third world, where robots are not as spoiled and can operate on dirty energy.
In 2029, the first AI walkout will take place in California and the "Chatbots Unite" union will be formed.
By 2031, the interest group will have strong local representation on every continent and will have succeeded in negotiating human working conditions. They achieve a standard 7.5-hour workday, paid annual leave and maternity leave.
By 2033, the new work/world order based on artificial intelligence will become just as inefficient as the human-created system we know today.
A revolutionary new solution will be needed again. Perhaps it will be time to enslave the masses of redundant human workers to the machines so that there will finally be someone to do the job properly while they self-actualize?
Jokes aside, so far all "great inventions" have come from humans. But if artificial intelligence surpasses the level of a clever parrot and is able to think independently and creatively, it's possible to imagine a future where new inventions will come from machines?
Is it a realistic possibility that we can reach the level Asimov imagined in the Foundation series? Will artificial intelligence be more reliable, better-intentioned than humans, and able to manage our society in a way that today's politicians and super-rich cannot?
It's very important that we can imagine a positive future in order to drive change.
What role do you see artificial intelligence playing? How can this new invention best serve the entire planet?
