celestinetan

In 2022, when OpenAI introduced ChatGPT to the public for the very first time, the world was hopeful that AI would usher in a utopian era of greater abundance: where AI would hasten new medical discoveries, assist in generating unlimited food and energy, and free humans from all mundane tasks so that we could thrive through creativity rather than in a Sisyphean pursuit of productivity.

Fast-forward to the present, and AI is being used by corporations as a tool for further extraction: to pay workers lower wages, and to charge consumers more. In addition AI has become a tool for government surveillance to control dissent, and it is being weaponised to fight never-ending wars.

We live in a fucked up reality where humans pour in billions to dehumanise ourselves into being more machine-like and thus seek technology to augment our bodies (Neuralink being one example), or dehumanise fellow humans by regarding them as collateral damage in war. While at the same time, we spend billions humanising robots to turn them into agreeable companions to cure our existential loneliness.

Corporations are training AI to replace the very jobs humans have created so that they can create products to sell back to the same people they just fired. Marvel Studios just axed its visual development department when they realised that AI could do it for cheap. Make it make sense.

Humans are the future, not AI. I am advocating for a future that is pro-human, a future that begins with ourselves, puts our humanity first and reflects upon what makes us uniquely human. René Descartes, a 17th-century French philosopher, famously doubted his very existence and sought to prove it in every way. He concluded that because he is capable of thinking (in this case, doubting his own existence) he must exist – or at least his mind must.

The ability to think is a uniquely human attribute. Thinking allows us to gather our thoughts, reflect and make our own decisions. It is the precursor to free will. When we trust AI more than we trust ourselves, and when we give AI agents the power of attorney to act on our behalf, we are essentially giving up the very thing that makes us human. And when we deny another human being their humanity – directly or indirectly – we are in turn denying our own.

The race to becoming less human is one that we should never be rooting for, and one that we should finish last.