We’re Missing the Plot When It Comes to AI

Last year, ChatGPT aced the bar exam. We’re also told that pretty soon, the program will have a “Ph.D.” level of intelligence. No one is precisely sure what that means, or whether it’s even intended as a compliment. (Are we...

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Last year, ChatGPT aced the bar exam. We’re also told that pretty soon, the program will have a “Ph.D.” level of intelligence. No one is precisely sure what that means, or whether it’s even intended as a compliment. (Are we talking a Ph.D. in physics or a Ph.D. in “Education Leadership”?) AI can do all the driving for you. The writing for you. The chatting for you. The dating for you. The shopping for you. The therapy for you. The tutoring for you. And on and on it goes.

In each of these potential avenues of the conquest of artificial intelligence (AI), computers and human beings are laid out side by side and evaluated by their abilities. The question we’re generally left asking is: who (or what) can do it better? And is this new technology going to render human activity irrelevant? 

My personal interest in AI budded in late 2022 when ChatGPT arrived on the scene and promptly became every college kid’s best friend. Then Villanova University was caught using it to send a  consoling letter about a school shooting at Michigan State. Employers sighed in relief once they realized they could dismiss their uncomfortable qualms about firing people directly. “ChatGPT, please write a nice but firm termination email to John Doe.”

And of course, the critiques, including from my own pen, started to flow. Actually, no, many declared: ChatGPT isn’t perfect, gets citations wrong, makes stuff up, can’t exactly do math, and makes it so Edward Scissorhands seems like a star model in the phalange department. AI coated the whole internet with a dross of fakery that seemed to land greenly in the gut, like a bad McDonald’s burger that just doesn’t taste as good as the advertisement. (READ MORE: Now We’ve Got Proof that Wikipedia is Biased)

AI Is Not Human

But we’re making a mistake comparing AI with human intelligence to begin with. It’s like comparing tugboats with narwhals. Yes, the boat might be able to chug a bit longer or sail in the same waters as the fish, but does that mean they suddenly belong in the same category? So, they both have “fins.” Does that mean they’re cousins now? 

It’s almost like we’re so tempted to compare ourselves with these artificial “minds” because culturally, we’ve come to see human beings as little more than advanced computers. We input data from childhood, learn how to compute it, and then generate our own formulations of the world when we’re ready. 

Roger Scruton, the late British philosopher, wrote about this problem for The Times back in 1985, when AI was brewing in the technological cauldron but hadn’t yet entered the world as it has today. Scruton was critiquing the philosopher John Searle in the essay, noting how even though human beings may have an understanding that AI lacks, that doesn’t address what human beings are for in the first place. He writes, 

Even if we are, as he [Searle] says, distinct from every artificial intellect, why should this matter to us? Is this the sign that we are free, that our lives have purpose and value, that death has lost its sting? Or is it just a weird addition to the sum of human misery: that we are not only, like the rest of nature, purposeless, but also cursed with the capacity to know how purposeless we are?

Without a broader vision of who we really are as human beings, distinguishing ourselves from AI isn’t enough. 

For the record, I think it’s good that we’re pointing out the uniquely human capacities like imagination, emotion, and creativity that AI can’t replicate. But we shouldn’t stop there. And we shouldn’t stop there because we human beings aren’t primarily computational machines that do certain things better than other members of the animal and robotic kingdoms.

We are relational beings who are to be valued not by our input and output but by our intrinsic dignity, as personal subjects who are able to know and be known by others. I think that’s what Scruton was after. Without a proper understanding of human personhood and a sense of meaning in life, all these distinctions lose their weight. (READ MORE: The Developing World (Still) Needs Golden Rice)

It would be bizarre if we started comparing ourselves with cars, or iPhones, or an irrigation system. So, neither should we compare ourselves with computer codes. It really is unbefitting for the species once commonly regarded as an image of the Divine, even for those who insist we’re nothing more than data dust.

The Western tradition holds that we are souls, not just impressive brains that can somehow self-reflect. Trying to code the mystery out of the human soul has maddened many a materialist. Don’t sell yourself short. 

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