AI, the Poor, and the Ignorant
This started with a question I asked myself:
How do our minds change when we can receive a plausible, informed, and convincing answer to literally any question we ask within seconds?
Imagine you are assigned a problem. You sit at a desk in a desolate field. No one and nothing around for miles. However, you know that between the sheet of paper and your mind, you are given all the information needed. As many have experienced in cases similar to this, the environment leads you to engage your mind more fully. If you are inclined to solve the problem, you exert far more effort in this isolation than you would if you had access to similar examples, a textbook, search engine, or in recent years, a capable LLM.
Current opinions span from complete AI rejection to heavy AI adoption. The rejecting person may take far longer to complete most tasks but gain internal confidence and intuition along the way. Said in reverse, the rejecting person may gain confidence and intuition along the way but take far longer to complete most tasks.
The first wording argues in favor of the individual. The other argues for completion of the task, or production. Of course, longer, more complicated tasks require internal confidence and intuition. Tasks such as considering who to vote for, what policy you want to see, where to take your life, how to spend your money, your time.
The individual suffers loss of confidence and ability the more they outsource their thinking to references and tools. However, most of the time, our tasks are impersonal, undesired, and, more recently, require greater amounts of external information. Because the human mind is energy-efficient and wants to ensure safety, why not receive aid from a thinking machine or references other than your own to maximize results and save time?
"...automation tends to de-skill operators. When humans do not practice a skill—either physical or mental—their ability to execute that skill degrades."
-Aphyr on Ironies of Automation
While this may seem harmless, human minds, while good at trying to, do not compartmentalize well enough. It's the same frontal lobe computing any task. If these undesired tasks are readily solved by externalizing our thinking and the majority of our days are spent doing undesirable tasks, a majority of our thinking is externalized. Our minds atrophy without us noticing. I am arguing that the written word and calculator did have an effect, imperceptible except for at a distance. Humans can achieve more output by increasing their memory artificially or enhancing the speed of quick calculations, but what do we lose? I say we lose a fundamental inner peace, rhythm of life, and connection to the natural world.
Considering what we lose is a longer, more complicated task in itself. The world is speeding up in every way, be it in walking speed or task switching. But as long as your survival is tied to time you don't control and your mind is too fragmented and de-conditioned to draw any conclusions, it's a difficult question to answer. We may even think we are critical thinkers, believe in our ability to notice patterns around us and maneuver ourselves, however, I am starting to believe more and more that this a coping mechanism in the face of more and more complexity in our lives.
I sometimes come to a conclusion about choices I make and patterns I notice, however I've recently come to the sad conclusion that in the sea of information entering my mind, I will likely forget these ideas far too soon or remember the but fail to act upon them over time. In the waves of perpetual events and words and images, so much is mostly lost in the gravity of rush.
I cannot take time off to settle my thoughts, rearrange my life, let alone organize to change the way our world is structured around us. Or so I may think. The victim is happy being the victim and the abuser is happy with the victim's ignorance and poverty of thought and action. The abuser is not a person or group of people. The abuser is an invisible force we have entered. We may theorize about its inevitability or destination.
“In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.”
-George Orwell, 1984
The Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers' (IEEE) slogan is "Advancing Technology for Humanity," which seems rather backwards to me. For the first definition of humanity, the human race, it is logical, but for the second, humaneness, benevolence? Where are we going? What do these engineers think they are advancing towards? I don't know. To escape the mistakes of our past with new technologies that definitely won't become the same?
Even in writing this article, I can tell how my mind has atrophied over the past five to ten years. I may rebut this occasionally and try to convince myself otherwise, but the moments of this recognition add up. We are speeding into an everlasting, thin blur, where we aren't capable of leaving. Because leaving requires stillness and time for thought, luxuries for us all, the poor and ignorant.