The Difficulty of Being Human
In an age of Cambrian explosion of Artificial Intelligence, are we stuck between being a human and a bot?
The more I think about the collective anxiety earthquake happening now on how humans will flourish in an age of AI, the more I ponder over the story of Trishanku hanging upside down.
King Trishanku wanted to go to Svarga (Heavens) in his mortal body.
Sage Vishwamitra wanted to prove a point against the wise Sage Vasishta and so performed a yagna which made sure that Trishanku reaches the gates of Svarga. Since no human with a mortal body is allowed to enter Svarga, Indra, the king of Devas, kicked him out, sending him on a freefall skydive toward the Earth.
Thankfully, Sage Vishwamitra was able to halt his fall and made sure that the king remains suspended midway in the air between Heaven and Earth. The story goes further that Sage Vishwamitra created a surrogate Svarga where Trishanku could reside, hanging upside down, midway between Heaven and Earth.
Today, our collective fates are largely similar to Trishanku, stuck between being human and a bot.
We see the feats of large language models and their ability to master the syntax of language by ingesting massive amounts of data. Even though we know that they are not human and have no understanding of what they are spitting out, we feel a pang of envy and start to wonder about what we bring as humans to the table where machines have already taken a seat.
This deep sense of anxiety about being a human amidst these fascinating AI developments is triggering two kinds of responses.
Response 1: We have started to become fundamentalists about the powers of being human. We wax about our ability to draw hands (which AI sucks apparently), our ability to write embodied poetry, and explore causality (which AI sucks) by connecting dots across different domains.
Response 2: We are busy convincing ourselves that machines will take over humans and are willing to do our darnedest to become bots that can conquer erstwhile humans. We start to believe in singularity theories, AI apocalypse, and start to imagine a world we saw in movies like Terminator, Ex Machina. As Jaron Lanier rightly points out, for those who are the helm, believing in this theory is a matter of realizing teenage science fiction fantasies.
“. I think part of it is, we simultaneously live in a science-fiction universe, where we’re living out the science fiction we grew up with. If you grew up on the Terminator movies, and the Matrix movies and Commander Data from Star Trek, naturally what you want to do is realise this idea of AI. It just seems like your destiny.” - Jaron Lanier, How Humanity Can Defeat AI
Going on this trip means you start fearing AI developments and the claims made by its proponents like Elon Musk, according to whom AI could become 'an immortal dictator from which we could never escape'.
While it is important to empathize with both of these responses, I think they are misguided.
Scientists who study the origins and salient mysteries of life, have talked about a spectacular event that paleontologists call the Cambrian Explosion, which happened half-billion years ago, where in a relatively short span of few million years, the biological diversity that represent life on the planet today, were invented in a frenzy of evolutionary innovation.
Today, we are witnessing an AI “Cambrian Explosion” moment, with a similar explosion of mind-boggling diversity of generative AI models, fueled by the restless, creative, entrepreneurial energies thriving inside the vibrant startup ecosystems all over the world.
I have been studying ML/AI researchers and playing around with AI tools to figure out the third response.
My response is still emerging. These are some of the early signs.
1) Humans have to delve into metacognition of their responses and where they are coming from.
2) Examining human biases, prejudices and delusional models of the world and selves become paramount
3) We have to rediscover human expertise that can play around with AI tools with as much felicity as our extended cognition is the key.
How have you formulated your response to the ongoing AI anxiety attack happening among humans? Do you feel stuck between being a human and a bot?