Dear reader: Today, we’ll explore familiar territory from an unfamiliar angle. To avoid semantics and jargon traps, I’ll refer to all forms of non-human intelligence as AI, artificial intelligence, robots, or instruments. With that out of the way, let’s get started!

Unsolicited help

We thought AI was built to help us do things. But we may have been mistaken. AI is built to think for us and to improve exponentially at a rate humans would never match. And AI’s strategic objective may be to limit humans’ ability to think for themselves.

Evidence all around us seems to suggest so. – Before we finish typing a sentence, AI has finished it for us. So, we no longer type full sentences or get our entire thoughts on paper. Instead, we start a thought, outsource our thinking to AI, and we innocently call its ability to finish our thoughts predictive text.

Notably, AI doesn’t ask you if you want its assistance; it just does what you seem to want. And it seems silly to erase what’s already done, so you “just” go with it. However, by continuously accepting unsolicited, and perhaps unneeded, help from an instrument, you’ll lose the ability and skill. Or not develop them at all. Worse yet, you’ll become dependent on something else to do what you need to do yourself: think!

The strategy to stop thinking

There was a time when you interacted with a person to buy something. Not anymore! At a restaurant chain I enjoy, Din Tai Fung, in Dubai, service robots greet guests, seat them, and deliver food to the table. And it isn’t limited to the food industry. Recently, most of us can remember having a problem with a company’s service or product. If we called the company to resolve the issue, we may have been greeted by one robot, served by another, and received a thank-you message from either.

Think about that!

Nowhere is this not-so-subtle transition from human touch to robot efficiency more apparent than in online shopping, where artificial intelligence offers to think for us, accompany us, and yes, partner with us in any way that may tickle our fancy.
It seems that for anything we want to do, technology suggests it can make our lives easier by thinking for us and doing it for us.

Let’s go one step further

Is someone spying on you? Most of us would freak out if someone asked us this question. However, we all have spies! When you place an order online, the tool that’s designed to help you and make you a happy customer is ultimately spying on you. In your search engine, when you type the letter “c” after ordering cookie mix a month ago, it completes the word for you. Before you know it, you’re salivating at the thought of warm chocolate chip cookies.

But it doesn’t end there!
We also outsource our thinking for transportation, both in buying and driving cars. We no longer see value in test-driving a car before buying it. Nor do we see the need to drive the car we bought. – Not because we cannot drive or have a driver; rather, because an instrument is driving it for us, and we call it a self-driving car.

The worst of all

Perhaps most heart-wrenching is how we let instruments orchestrate our relationships, particularly our intimate relationships and love partnerships. Here, instruments identify our mates, select our partners, tell us how to talk to our loved ones, and whether and when to end those relationships.

Undoubtedly, this strategy is a dead end because artificial intelligence is based on logic, but relationships are primarily emotional. – For this reason, relationships don’t grow and thrive when people are following a formula or process. They do when humans develop a hard-earned and vital skill: relationshipping, as articulated in The Key to Thriving!

Yet it seems we have endless help to stop us from thinking. And we accept it at a high cost!

What does it cost you, me, and us?

After a while, we may become so dependent on artificial intelligence that it becomes our god, with full rein over our decision-making and therefore our lives. And it can do so by luring us into believing an easy life is the best life. In other words, if we don’t have to do or think about anything, we are better off. When we buy into this, artificial intelligence doesn’t just co-opt our thinking. It slowly attenuates our ability to think soundly.

Why does this matter?

Sound thinking isn’t a formula. It is an amalgamation that balances heart and mind, morality and ambition, grace and justice, that which is beneficial with what is effective. All to deliver outcomes that promote life of the soul and body. And a machine can never do this because the delicate art of balancing heart, mind, soul, and body is inherently and reservedly human.

Unapologetically, artificial intelligence threatens our humanity. More than ever, we must be awake, alert, and aware of how much access and control it is gaining over our minds and our hearts. To this end, I’ll share another perspective next time.

For you and to you,
Aké

 Image credit: The Thinker | Musée Rodin