Have you ever heard somebody say something like, “well, AI can’t do this”, or maybe, “a machine will never be able to do that”.
I think it’s common and natural, when defending our value as humans, to immediately point back to the things that machines can’t do. At the same time, I think that it’s kind of backward and the wrong way to think about it.
The issue is that it predicates our value on something that might not last: we don’t know how long we will be able to do things that machines can’t.
Think about it. Art, music, poetry, novels, these are among the highest forms of human expression, and each one of those things was something that there was no way a machine could do just 100 years ago.
And maybe they still can’t yet, but our territory is definitely threatened now. There’s no way to guarantee that machines won’t take away our “monopoly” on these things in the future. AI is challenging our concept of what it means to be human.
And that’s where I think we often have the wrong idea. It’s not about what AI can’t do, it’s about what humans can’t do. Humans can’t be replaced.
When a human dies, there is no way to bring back an equivalent to who they were. All of their life experiences, everthing that they did or made or knew, nobody with their life will ever live in the world again. They are unique.
Machines can be copied; they can be replaced, but when I talk to you, a human, I’m talking to somebody who has lived a life that only you have lived. You have a perspective that nobody else has. The affect that our conversation has on both of us is not only unique in all the world, but unique in all of time.
When we make a machine, we tend to value its reproducibility and consistency. It’s a machine, usually we want it to do some task reliably, but that’s not what people are for. That not what life is for!
We live in a confusing time where we are simultaneously making machines more like people, and treating people more like machines. We are converging on a lukewarm middleground for both humans and machines where everything is meaningless.
If life was all about getting things done, then we should like to be able to teleport around and instantly get our tasks done with some magic wand or something. But to do so would be to give up living.
Our lives are fragile, temporary, and except for death, inescapable, and that’s partly why we have some sense of the value of the lives of others.
I think that our art, thoughout all time, has been a big reminder that we are more than just machines. Our art was an expression of our life experiences, a gift that shared something of who we are. It’s no wonder that to have machines competing with us in this space can feel like an attack on our humanity.
But as long as the machine can be copied, it can’t carry the same weight that a person does. As long the machine is not forced to live through life, unable to turn off its pain, unable to just flip a switch and choose to be somebody else, as long as it can do these things that humans can’t then it won’t mean as much.
It is our limitations, our hearts that trap our spirits and tie them to this world to feel and experience things, whether we like it or not, that make us special. And the fact that I can look at you, another human, and know that you also have the same limitations I have, that means something.
So when I talk to you, I want to talk to you, not an AI. I don’t care if it’s perfect or not, I want it to come from you because you are unique. I would rather have a few broken sentences from a human than a whole essay by an AI.
Not that AI isn’t really useful for certain tasks, but don’t let it write, or think, or produce art for you in your name. Don’t become the hands and feet of a machine. Live your own life! Your mistakes are worth more than the AI’s “perfection”.
Don’t judge your own value based on what you can do that the machine, or even other people, can’t do. It’s what we all can’t do that lets us relate to each-other.