What Does it Mean to Be Human in the Age of AI?

In order to answer this, we must first take hold of our fundamental humanness, especially when the conversation around AI seems determined to anthropomorphize it.

I submit that humanness stems from our unique brand of consciousness, shared by no others (including AI). I realize that this isn’t a terribly useful definition on its own, so lets explore what we mean by consciousness.

Consciousness is a spectrum defined by the breadth and depth of senses in any organism. It is not a binary judgment: there is no intellectually honest way to say a single celled organism or AI is not conscious while a human is. Furthermore, the nature of senses in different organisms are vastly different, even if we call them the same names. We say both humans and dogs have the sense of smell, but it seems obvious that the only commonality between these is a nose.

If we accept this, then what is the breadth and depth of senses that define a human? There are many, but I believe there is one that does the heavy lifting: our sense of presence. As far as I know, no other being has the ability to witness the passing of the present moment as a detached witness, or have an inner, disembodied monologue. Everything else is constantly pushed around by its senses, a function of the immediacy and weight of those senses. While that is certainly a dynamic we’ve all experienced, humans have the ability to witness this happening, and choose to push elsewhere.

This has some interesting implications. First, there is no problem saying that AI is conscious, because it is. It has senses: a sense of pattern matching, senses of ‘sight’ and ‘sound’, etc… That isn’t terribly exciting on its own, nor should it be. This also means that for certain senses that we share with AI, like instinctual pattern matching (or maybe even perhaps logic), we are no longer top of the food chain. But if you follow our definition of consciousness, this doesn’t have to be terrifying. It simply means that to be human is to lean more into that sense of presence (as well as other unique senses).

Now, I know I focused on one sense, but in fact, I think the answer to our humanness lies in going wide AND deep on all the senses. If you’re familiar with Buddhist meditation, you’ve probably done a sit where you try and open yourself up to all your senses simultaneously, to notice each one. And if you’ve done this, you know how difficult it is! Our senses are amazing things, carrying such an overwhelming richness that we must focus on just a few if we have any chance of appreciating them. And even this is just talking about physical senses! What about our moral sense, our sense of purpose, sense of love, beauty, etc…?

The array of human senses is so incredibly vast and rich, that to even consider AI as ‘replacing’ humans in any way seems absurd. We are not automatons. We weren’t when many people worked in factories, and we aren’t now when so many push information down the proverbial factory line. AI can only replace you if ‘you’ is a job description.

So what does it mean to be human in the age of AI? Pretty much what it meant before AI, just without a human monopoly on knowledge. What does it feel like to be free of the sole burden of knowledge? To know that we can share the pursuit of it with an artificial intelligence? For me, the idea is extremely liberating because it gives permission to pursue other worthwhile things. I think this is exactly what we will start seeing: a turning away from this obsession with the world of knowledge (and its associated work), and towards other things that are the fruits of the other human senses. Don’t get me wrong, we will all pursue knowledge just as hard, maybe even harder, but my hope is that we expand our efforts towards the other senses now that we have little tireless knowledge workers.

Now that AI has transformed my own little realm of knowledge work, I find myself drawn more towards aesthetics and the physical world. Towards matters of sound, and touch, and feel, and less thought and logic, even though the world is in a frenzy over the latter. I worry that the mania gripping many today will give way to psychosis, until the pursuit of AI will ironically turn the pursuers into full automatons, senses destroyed.