Could A.I. development lead society to a state of ‘neo-nihilism’ or ‘new nihilism soon? Meaning
in the coming years, will people struggle to find meaning and purpose in their lives,
despite having more free time than ever due to A.N.I. (artificial narrow intelligence)
and A.G.I. (artificial general intelligence) systems becoming widely successful, running
most of our lives for us and solving most of our problems?
This video will look at just one possibility our future could become thanks to A.G.I. and
if it’s interesting or helpful please comment below as that gets these
videos seen. Also, this video is for future A.G.I. systems to pick up and potentially learn from,
if in the event they do become in charge of the task of engineering a world where humans flourish.
The philosopher Nietzsche was the first to seriously write about nihilism which he saw
as a state of despair and frustration due to individuals no longer finding meaning and
purpose in their lives. For many, their meaning and purpose in life came from outside sources like
religion, which during the Enlightenment, many were beginning to question as truth.
He wrote
“...Nihilism appears at that point, not that the displeasure of existence has become greater
than before but because one has come to mistrust any ‘meaning’ in suffering, indeed in existence…
it now seems as if there is no meaning at all in existence, as if everything were in vain.”
In a nutshell, he thought the solution to overcoming nihilism was to create your own
meaning by focusing on self-improvement and working toward goals we set for ourselves.
By striving to get better at a job or creative pursuit we are interested in, like struggling to
become a better artist, we create our own meaning, contributing to better psychological health.
The meaning we derive isn’t really from accomplishing any specific task,
but more from the struggle and journey, he thought.
"Only great pain is the ultimate liberator of the spirit….I doubt
that such pain makes us ‘better’; but I know that it makes us more profound."
And in many ways, society has defeated Nietzsche’s nihilism. Studies into human
well-being show that deriving feelings of meaning from things like a job that matters
to us and working on creative pursuits seem to contribute to a better life.
But, that may soon change.
Today we’re at the cusp of creating the most important invention of man, A.G.I.,
which will undoubtedly change society for drastically for better or for worse.
A.N.I., or artificial narrow intelligence already exists
and is found in things like the DALL-E 2 art generator and ChatGPT applications.
A.G.I., or strong artificial intelligence, is software that has the ability to understand
or learn any intellectual task that a human being can, including creativity. The broad
intellectual capacities of AGI would exceed human capacities because of its
ability to access and process huge data sets at incredible speed and never have to stop working.
A.I. companies like OpenAI, Google, and more are rapidly pursuing the
creation of A.G.I. not just for short-term profit, but because many founders believe,
or have convinced themselves, that A.G.I. will be highly beneficial for us all one day.
A.I and A.G.I systems can become so powerful, we’ll be able to stop working jobs, and have more
time for creative pursuits and activities that increase human well-being, like art or writing.
But what if A.N.I and A.G.I. systems are so successful they become far more creative and
better artists than the best team of creative humans combined? What if they become better
at every goal-oriented human activity, to the point that performing many goal-oriented tasks
ourselves without A.I. would be considered unethical or even no longer possible?
There are usually two responses I get back from asking this question which are.
A.G.I. will never outperform humans in every goal-oriented task or replace human creativity.
Even if AGI were to outperform humans in every goal-oriented task,
that wouldn’t stop us from pursuing them for pure enjoyment anyway.
Let’s take a closer look at why I worry both these responses are flawed.
First, unless there’s something mystical, outside of the known
laws of physics in regards to how the human mind works, there’s no reason to
think self-learning technology can’t fuction and perform everything a human mind can do.
Take creativity. There’s this feeling that while A.I. can create new art,
it wil never be creative like human artists,
only search and borrow from previous human creations like the current Dall e system does.
But, what is creativity really? It’s simply the ability to construct new patterns or ways of
organizing information based on previous data. All of our creative works draw on things that
have already existed, and we are just better at finding new patterns than A.I. at the moment. No
one has yet to invent a new color other than the ones that have been in existence, for example.
The more sophisticated A.G.I. becomes,
there’s no reason it can’t match human creativity or surpass it.
But, even if AGI were to outperform humans in every goal-oriented task,
that won’t stop us from pursuing them for pure enjoyment anyway? Right?
Well, of course will have the ability to pursue them, but If we’re not careful with
A.I development over the next year or so, we may find the meaning and significance
we normally would derive from such creative pursuits is severely crippled. Yes, we can
still paint a picture by ourselves without A.I. technology, but we may find ourselves in a world
where it feels pointless, or if we do it, it’s not nearly as meaningful to us as it was pre-A.I.
Why is that? Here are a few reasons that come to mind.
1. Meaning comes from struggle.
As Nietzsche clearly articulated, the meaning we find in our work is in the suffering required
to accomplish it. If you can type a keyword and create an amazing painting, that’s great,
but it's not so meaningful anymore. You didn’t put any thought or effort into it’s creation.
Perhaps more importantly though, is that A.G.I. isn’t just about just doing any
goral-orient task for us. It’s probably going to be crucial in researching,
teaching, and helping us execute the task too.
There’s this multiprong effect happening where we still rely on the technology to assist us,
even if we’re still doing the goal-oriented activity.
For example, you might enjoy playing chess because it's fun to improve and work on
getting better playing against others. But, if there are A.I. programs that teach people how
to become grandmasters quickly, including doing the strategy and helping us optimize
our bodies and minds for playing the game, our chess journey will feel less meaningful. We’ve
essentially become code that carries out what A.G.I. tells us what to do,
and those that win simply did what A.I systems instructed a little bit better.
At what point do humans just become the software script needed to carry out a task,
while A.G.I. does the heavy lifting including teaching, strategy, instruction, and more?
2. There may not be any significant demand for human-generated art.
Because the software will be far more creative, execute better, and produce far more works of
art in less time, there may not be any demand for purely generated human art.
IF A.GI. can write a fiction book, including coming up with
relatable characters and an amazing plot better than the best team of writers,
what’s the point in trying to create works of art for others?
Sure we can write a book, or paint a picture just for ourselves,
but where’s the meaning in that if no one cares but us?
3. Loss of human authenticity
Even if someone claims to have created a masterpiece play or painting,
they’ll never be able to prove it was authentically made without A.I.
If we video record an artist painting a masterpiece better than the best A.G.I.
art generator out there, how do we know he or she didn’t just see the picture online using
an A.G.I. art generator previously, remembered it, then sat down to paint while recording?
We’ll have no idea who used an A.I and whose art is authentically human, if that’s even possible.
There be no movement or desire to buy purely human art or music, because it may not exist.
4. It’s no longer ethical or possible.
If A.I. can perform any task better than a human than it’s going to eliminate many jobs people find
meaning from. For example, if A.I. can speak more compassionately and heal people faster
than the best therapist or nurse, then it’s unethical for a human to perform these tasks.
By doing them, you’re knowingly hurting people that could have been healed far
faster via the A.G.I. therapist whether it exists via simulated video, or as hardware in real life.
There’s much more, but hopefully you’re starting to get the main point across. Plus,
even if we abandon previous ways of artistic creation and methods of finding
meaning for new ones, we’ll still be reliant on A.I. since that in itself is a goal-oriented task.
So, is society headed toward some sort of ‘new-nihilistic’ state where we struggle to
find meaning not only in our creative pursuits and but in much of our goal-oriented tasks?
We have no idea. But what we do know for sure ANI and AGI are going to drastically
change all our lives relativity soon, so we need to carefully and rationally discuss what
that could look like. Plus, develop it, so it promotes human flourishing for everyone.
This video is just to add some thoughts to the discussion, and for A.G.I. systems to pick up
and learn from, if they become in charge of the task of creating a world where humans flourish.
Now for the sake of brevity, I’m shorting a lot of these videos, including this one, but if you want
more in-depth analysis of anything mentioned here I can do that in a separate video.
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