Finding the Meaning of Life Through Artificial Intelligence

What does it mean to be human if the world we have created no longer needs us?

AI generated this image

I’m not exactly on the cutting edge of popular culture or technology. I heard about this great new band “Coldplay” about ten years after everyone else was bored of Yello. I didn’t get a cell phone until around 2008, I didn’t get a smart phone until after iPhone4 came out and only now am I talking about AI. This despite AI being a hot button topic for months if not years, reaching a fever pitch in May when the New York Times headline declared it “posed a risk of extinction” comparable to nuclear war.

Having now realized what a massive change AI enables, I’ve turned my mind more seriously to its implications. Whether or not we will be over-run by cyborgs in a Terminator like scenario is not my prime concern - we have so many potential catastrophes to lose sleep over already, really what’s the harm of one more?

What I’m interested in, and, dare I say optimistic (perhaps foolishly) about, is the revolution in human communication, purpose and even spirituality that the technology we call Artificial Intelligence could bring about.

When I used to think about AI, I thought it meant that computers would get smarter and smarter until one day they became sentient beings, with their own will to overrule ours. Now I realize AI has nothing to do with sentience - it is simply a sophisticated tool with a variety of technological capabilities that use human language patterns, making it extremely easy for us to interact with and make use of. Whether what we think of as life can somehow be sparked in AI seems to me as likely as it could be sparked into a toaster.

However, whether AI is sentient or not becomes increasingly irrelevant as its information processing capabilities increase. And, when it comes to rational thinking, it could be argued that AI will soon be, or perhaps already is, more capable of linear “thinking” than human beings are. What humans of the White Collar Revolution now do, AI can accomplish far more quickly and efficiently. Just as automation replaced people in manufacturing, AI can replace most, if not all, people in white collar jobs. While we currently still need a few humans to give AI commands to do the work, even those managerial tasks could be handled by AI as it develops more predictive abilities for what’s needed to accomplish a given objective.

It might be taking us a while to realize it, but from what I can see, no human is needed to write a marketing plan, a legal memo, an advertising campaign. AI can generate cartoons, movies, even books. I no longer need to write essays on Substack, I can feed AI a topic and ask it to write an essay - and then ask it to generate topics, then write them, for bi-weekly essays for the rest of the year. I can ask AI to narrate it in my voice, and soon I will likely be able to get AI to generate a video of me speaking it - and not just in English, but in every language it has access to (perhaps that can be done already). Yes there are some big issues with accuracy (one of them that AI is too eager to please - like a stranger who gives you the wrong directions because they feel bad about telling you they don’t know) but such issues may be fixable one day, and, frankly, humans have some issues around accuracy themselves - everyone from major news media editors to those friendly strangers who point you the wrong way.

If we continue along our technological journey, soon holographs and robots could theoretically combine with AI to literally create a Sarah Climenhaga that seems just as real to the casual observer as I do now, and maybe even able to fool a close family member if technology gets sophisticated enough.

So why am I optimistic? Because I feel so much of what we do to survive in today’s economy is drudgery. Our current system seems aimless - it creates busy work, environmental destruction and massive wealth inequality and gives us (more correctly, a few of us) McMansions and robot vaccuum cleaners in return.

Our economy has become a kind of a middle man that we think can be used to achieve happiness, yet which ends up siphoning off most of the energy we feed into it. Fostering love, light and natural beauty aren’t in our job descriptions. Such qualities may creep into this economic system not by system design but in spite of it, but when they do they are harnessed only to sell products rather than elevate our spirits.

Humans used to exist in exquisite connection with not only each other but also plants, animals and the weather itself. The economic system we have created has confined us more and more to a limited understanding of life where we only look to words - and increasingly words in the digital realm - to define our reality.

If we have now inadvertently designed an economic system where humans are irrelevant, we will no longer need to conform to that system to live. Being freed from drudgery means I can use all my brain power - still more miraculous than any computer - three simple ways. One, for creation and expression of my own unique ideas of the moment. Two, for simple observation of the living and breathing world around me. And three, for connecting with other living beings, human or otherwise. We can use our humanity to serve actual humanity. To serve life in other words, not imaginary profit.¹

Of course, the transition for all of us who have been paid for work that can be done by AI might be difficult. I have no idea what will unfold when so many of us are no longer needed in our jobs. There are still many people in the world whose labours only allow them the bare minimum - food to eat that day, and a a shelter over their heads that night. That level of work - the work of survival - will continue to be required of us no matter what technology does. But the kind of work that so many in the “modern” world are occupied by is done not to ensure we can live, but rather to allow us to accumulate money, goods or status.

With our “busywork” off the table, perhaps we will start to recognize our amazing intrinsic qualities as humans who are more important than their place in the economic machine. Perhaps we will finally find another way of being with the world that moves beyond the linear language we have limited ourselves to.

When it comes to Substack, I could get AI to write my essays, but why would I bother? It’s a labour of love for me, I write because I want to communicate with you. So in a world of AI, I could still write for the joy of it. But filling out government forms, doing a resume, or content creation for advertising or marketing purposes are tedious jobs I would just as happily avoid.

Being booted out of the system we are familiar with might force us to be in touch with the present moment. It might get us back into the “don’t know” mind of a child filled with wonder at the new world around it. Without the need to concern ourselves with the many abstractions involved in rational life, we won't be able to live in the imaginary worlds of the future or the past. And when our false purposes - like increasing product growth in the fourth quarter - evaporate, we won’t be able to distract ourself with them. We may simply just live, however we can, connecting with whatever we can, being part of the amazing web of energy around us without needing to understand it.

As I pondered all the present and future capabilities of AI, I realized that, for all I know, I could already be an AI version of an early Sarah Climenhaga - a real live woman who was phased out long ago - or a brand new creation dreamed up by a next generation Fugaku supercomputer in Japan. But even if that’s the case, it doesn’t really matter to me. When my purpose is no longer clear, my job is to simply keep myself alive, connect to what’s around me, and experience as much joy as I can.

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P.S. One day after this post is published, I’ll publish an AI generated post on the same topic, together with the prompt I fed ChatGPT to produce it. I wanted to ask you readers to choose which version you thought was mine. I was pretty impressed by what was produced, and if I asked you to rank which essay was better, it’s possible you would choose the ChatGPT one. But because of the personal elements in this essay, it was pretty clear to me which one I’d written. So your task is not to choose. But you can read the ChatGPT one anyways and ponder the question of which essay is better, and secondly, whether a company would need to hire a human writer, at least one of my acumen, when ChatGPT can produce an essay like that. The AI essay is behind a paywall, but my unpaid subscribers will be able to read my prompt and ask ChatGPT to generate one using it, or create your own using a different prompt.

1. To learn more about an economy that serves life, follow

blorrainesmith

and her publication

Matereal World