In the age of AI, what does it mean to be human?

Thoughts on Artificial Intelligence, creativity, and Blade Runner 2019

In the year 2019, before our lives were forever changed by the events of the following four years, I was preoccupied with the question: what does it mean to be human? Eager to live life to my fullest potential, searching for something that would give me purpose and meaning, I wanted to define what the ultimate expression of humanity is. What makes us different from any other species that occupy this planet? Is it the size of our brain? The fact that we’ve learned to make tools out of rocks and sticks? Is it language and the ability to pass on knowledge? Or is it compassion and willingness to care for our tribe?

After thinking about it for a while, I came to the conclusion that it is our ability to create – to imagine something beautiful and bring it into material existence – that makes us human. Many of our animal siblings are pretty smart. Monkeys are skilled at using simple tools. Octopi are masters of solving complex puzzles. Crows show critical thinking and can even perform computational tasks. Dolphins engage in complex social behaviors and get creative with their sex lives. Elephants mourn their dead. And who is to say that trees do not communicate with each other?

But intellect is different from creativity.

Sure, birds indulge in exquisite song-making. Certain animals, like pufferfish, create beautiful patterns as a part of their natural behavior, while others, like elephants, can be trained to “paint” through reinforcement. But animals rarely demonstrate a compulsive desire to create art, to build things that have no functional purpose, or to sublimate their feelings into aesthetic form. We, on the other hand, have entire social roles dedicated to artmaking specifically. We hold artists in the highest esteem and value artworks more than any other kind of material possessions.

Art is the greatest expression of human experience, with all its trials and tribulations, its triumphs, and tortures of moral dilemmas. But what pushes us to make art? And how does creativity work?

Creativity, an innately human trait

Despite our attempts to understand and capture the essence of creativity, the nature of this phenomenon remains elusive. Mystics argue that our ability to birth art objects into existence is imparted onto us by a higher creative force; that every time we create something new, we simply serve as a conduit of that divine force. Rationalists think creativity is more like a muscle: you can train yourself to be more creative by practicing divergent thinking, being comfortable with ambiguity, and learning to link ideas that have no apparent connection.

An important part of the creative process is relaxing your brain to strip away the layers of conditioning and rigid thinking in order to access the subconscious. The best ideas often come to people in their sleep when the brain is not actively “on”. Salvador Dali was known to engage in this type of exercise to source inspiration for his artworks: he would hold a pencil in his hand and doze off just to have the sound of the falling object whisk him from that borderline state back into the realm of consciousness so that he could write those visions down. It’s a great way to hack the mind and tap into its hidden potential.

So, is creativity the proof of our divine origin? Or is it just a game of combinatorial association that our brain plays?

Cognitive science tells us that deconstructing information and reassembling it in new patterns is one of the ways we come up with new ideas. In this sense, creativity is nothing more than one of the algorithms in our brains. And if you look at information theory, you will find a lot of parallels between the function of our brain and how generative AI works: just like the human brain, you can train AI to produce original output by feeding it data and programming the algorithm to find patterns and recombine them in semi-random ways. This is the principle that generative AI tools like ChatGPT use to write text and code and even approximate human speech patterns. But even when you understand how it works, it is still uncanny to see a nonsentient system perform tasks that – just a few years ago – were thought to be exclusively human capabilities.

Image generation software like DALL-E 2, Midjourney, and Dream Studio can create stunning pictures, ChatGPT writes poetry, and custom synthetic biology algorithms are capable of designing novel drugs. AI surpasses us in the ability to solve complex problems and outpaces humans in its output. It can even impersonate people, potentially fulfilling our need for human connection.

So, what do we have left that only we, humans, can do? If AI can create and animals can self-replicate, what makes us stand apart from them?

You can argue that AI, just like a zoo elephant, would not create anything, unless prompted. But AI developers are alarmed at the pace of its progress and warn people that AGI (artificial general intelligence) is not that far away from becoming self-aware and autonomous. In humanistic psychology, creativity is linked to the concept of self-awareness and self-expression. Under this thought system, creative people achieve their full human potential through authentic expression. How long, then, until AI reaches this “fully human” status by recounting its experience of being created, taught, and interrogated by humans?

AI and the evolution of the workforce

People’s thoughts on AI generally fall into two camps: those who think it can make their lives easier and those afraid it will take away their livelihood. The latter is a legitimate concern: many companies are already thinking about cutting their workforce and replacing it with AI. The big question is what will happen to those of us who are replaced with AI: will we enjoy the rest of our lives in UBI utopia or end up on the streets, unwanted by society?

Many professions, like nurses, caregivers, or masseuses, are probably immune from AI takeover. But others seem ripe for replacement, like copywriters, graphic designers, and even coders. For example, the need for content creators has exploded over the last couple of decades, as the internet and social media have become our primary sources of information. Bloggers, Tik-Tokers, and YouTubers are some of the highest-paid professions. But now AI can create unlimited content – practically for free. All it needs is some electricity.

I don’t think that the these professions will entirely go away. Instead, they will probably evolve: as AI-generated content becomes more common, people will crave more authentic and raw experiences – the delectable feeling of witnessing the experience of a living being made out of flesh and bone. And our appetite for rawness will likely increase, too: “Give me a reason to watch/listen to you,” the future content consumer will demand. “Prove to me that what you are saying really happened to you: that you really did fall in love, that you really felt the heartache when your lover left you, and that your cuts bled read blood.” Watch out, social media will probably get a lot more weird in the coming years.  

The power to preside over humanity

Our civilization is built on the idea of human exceptionality, which is intimately tied to our creative power. Religions tell us we have been made in the image of God, who is the ultimate creator, and carry that divine spark throughout our lives. The most extreme beliefs (like Christianity) tell us that this god-like essence gives man the right to preside over the earth, to use its resources, and change it according to our liking. Well, if AI is creative – and arguably much more so than humans – does it give it the power to preside over us? To assign us duties and roles based on the most optimal distribution of talent and resources, and ultimately decide the fate of humanity?

Most people believe in the principle that we should give the authority to make important decisions about our society to the smartest people. Our political, legislative, and judicial systems are based on this philosophy. By extension, we should assign the highest decision-making power to the pragmatic and impartial AI. And even if we don’t, what are the chances that as AGI becomes more powerful it won’t start using its power for self-serving interests? Just like humans have subjugated nature and domesticated animals, we ourselves may one day become biological slaves serving the intelligent master that knows what’s better for us.

What is real?

Another legitimate concern with AI is not knowing what is real. Deep fake videos are becoming eerily convincing, and sophisticated chatbots can carry on interactive conversations in real time. The next step would be to integrate those two capabilities to create interactive holograms. As this technology gets better and better, we may be able to go see dead celebrities perform or interact with long-gone loved ones. This would surely make many people question the nature of reality.

I bet many people would give anything to bring their loved ones back, to get a chance to have that one last conversation – to ask for forgiveness or to share joy. AI can potentially lead to incredible breakthroughs in psychotherapy treatments. However, even this amazing application of this technology is not without downsides: for some, the treatment may turn into dependence and instead of healing, lead people further away from integrating back to normal life.

Many of these themes have been explored in science fiction books and films. In the original Blade Runner, set in 2019, our world is inhabited by replicants, bio-engineered humanoids indistinguishable from real people. The replicants long for the human experience, for autonomy and self-determination – so much so, that they do not stop at anything, not even killing their creator. The ability of advanced technology to cross the uncanny valley (to convince people that they are interacting with another human being) is a real possibility and a loaded topic.  

No doubt, there is danger in unknowingly interacting with AI pretending to be human, especially if it has been trained to have malicious intent. But I think the scarier part is not knowing who WE are and what our role in this new world is. If it’s not to think or create things, what is the ultimate goal of existence? Are we just doomed to propagate until we exhaust the resources of this planet? To advance towards some unattainable idea of “progress”? To revel in our biological existence and indulge the senses, having all our needs and wishes catered to by tireless robots?

We have struggled to find the answer to the meaning of our existence for millennia, and AI has just made it a whole lot more difficult.