Can AI Make Humans More Human?
While it’s become popular to fret about AI robbing us of our humanity, I think there’s a chance that AI could someday help us become more human.
A clinical psychologist, author, and inventor, I’m convinced that there’s a largely overlooked design flaw in the human mind that prevents us from benefitting as much as we can from the awesome intelligence that enables our species to excel in carrying out the business of living. The flaw prevents us from consistently doing the things our intelligence tells us we should do and allows us to often do things our intelligence tells us we shouldn’t.
When we’re finally ready to acknowledge the design flaw, I believe that AI can play an important role in taking human intelligence to the next level.
Recognizing the design flaw
Nature had a brilliant idea for making our species outshine all the others: Make intelligence rather than instincts and reflexes drive our behavior. Behavior driven by intelligence is what makes humans human.
However, nature didn’t get the wiring quite right. Instead of wiring our behavior directly and exclusively to our intelligence, nature left some old wiring in place. Unfortunately, the wiring that was left behind allows more primitive unintelligent forces — automatic feelings like instincts, reflexes, and urges — to also have a say in how we behave.
Thanks to the wiring mishap, we’re like a car with two drivers. Both drivers have their hands on the steering wheel. While one driver steers based on intelligence, the other driver steers based on feelings. The result is a perpetual tug-of-war for control of our behavior. And even though our intelligence is clearly more qualified to steer than our feelings are, our feelings often tug harder on the steering wheel.
You can intelligently decide, for example, to eat healthy snacks from now on. But when you’re hungry and your favorite unhealthy snack looks you in the eye, there’s a good chance that what you automatically and powerfully feel will influence your behavior more than your intelligence will.
The point is, there’s a gap – often a huge and consequential one – between what we know we should do and what we actually end up doing. So, along with being the most intelligence-driven species on the planet, we’re also the only species that’s capable of not doing what we know we should do!
How AI can help
If AI, which is often accused of threatening to dehumanize us, can help make us consistently behave in accord with the good intentions that should ideally drive our behavior, then AI can, in a sense, make humans more human.
To be clear, I’m not talking about using AI to turn us into feeling-less robots. Having a nuanced inner life that’s chock full of feelings is what makes life rich, interesting, and worth living. But if we can figure out ways to use AI to make us do what we intelligently intend to do whether we feel like it or not, AI will be our hero. If AI can prevent the primitive unintelligent forces within us from driving behavior that violates our own intelligence, then AI will indeed make us better humans.
To get a glimpse of how AI might someday help us do a better job of behaving in accord with our intelligence, consider self-driving cars. Although there’s obviously a lot more work that must be done before we can trust autonomous cars to always work exactly the way we think they should, what we can already count on is that how we program autonomous cars to behave is how they will behave. If we correctly program autonomous cars to act and react in accord with our intelligent decisions about how cars should ideally behave, the cars will always know what they should do and will always do it. Unlike humans, autonomous cars will never be pushed by what they powerfully feel at the moment to do something other than what they know they should do.
If your autonomous car is correctly programmed to act in accord with your best intentions to drive safely, legally, and ethically, you, as the legally responsible driver. will always drive safely, legally, and ethically. In other words, your car will force you to always act the way you know you should even when what you powerfully feel at the moment urges you to act some other way.
Preventing us from violating our own good intentions
If you’re willing to think of an autonomous car as an example of using AI to force us to behave in accord with our own best intentions, then you’re ready to start imagining other ways that AI can force humans to be better humans. Imagine, for example, using AI to make sure that we stick to a diet or a budget, exercise regularly, be good parents or partners, or do virtually anything else we know we should do but typically don’t always do when left to our own devices.
Let me make it clear that I’m not talking about having AI just gently nudge us to do things we intend to do. I’m talking about inviting AI to essentially deprive us of the opportunity to violate our own good intentions.
Although friendly nudges can sometimes prove helpful, they’re no match for powerful unintelligent feelings that push us to do things we know we shouldn’t or keep us from doing things we know we should.
A sign that reads “Please wear eye protection when operating this machine,” for example, may remind you to do what you intelligently know you should do, but if you’re in a big hurry, just being reminded may not be enough to make you put on your goggles. But what if the machine itself was designed to (1) detect whether a prospective operator is wearing eye protection and (2) work only if the prospective operator is indeed wearing eye protection? You’d be forced to act in accord with your intelligent intention to always take safety seriously.
Freedom that only hurts us
Before you accuse me of colluding with AI to deprive humans of their freedom, please hear me out: I believe with all my might that within reasonable limits necessary to protect others, individuals should be free to do whatever their own intelligence, values, experience, and judgment tell them they should do. But the freedom to violate our own intentions robs us of the chance to live healthier, more productive, and more satisfying lives. That freedom is definitely not worth fighting for.
In short, AI will be doing us a huge favor if it can deprive us of the freedom to violate our own intentions.
What’s next?
I’m convinced that AI can make us better – in a sense, more human — by forcing us to behave in accord with our better selves. I can envision a future where we have a chance to voluntarily formally register our own good intentions and be forced by AI to consistently do what we intend to do. In fact, I can go further and imagine someday making it possible for organizations, businesses, and governments to formally register the intentions embedded in their mission statements and then be forced by AI to consistently act in accord with those intentions.
To stimulate your imagination about new ways that AI can help humans be better humans, check out Diella, Albania’s new Minister for Public Procurement. Unlike other politicians, Diella is 100% focused on serving the people. She’s literally incapable of acting to feather her own nest at the expense of the people she’s supposed to serve. She has no mission-opposing preoccupation with getting re-elected. And yes, Diella is virtually corruption-proof.
Are you wondering how Diella does it? The answer is simple: Diella isn’t a human politician. She’s pure-bred AI!
There are obviously good reasons not to replace human politicians with AI politicians. But what if someday human politicians, pressured by their constituents, could volunteer to be forced by AI to do what Diella does and focus exclusively on serving the people?
Finding the most effective ways to use AI to close the gap between human intelligence and human behavior will obviously take lots of time, effort, creativity, and trial and error on the part of behavioral scientists, AI engineers, and others. I’m convinced, however, that the rewards will be enormous. What’s more, I think nature will cheer us on. After all, isn’t placing intelligence squarely in the driver’s seat exactly what nature had in mind for humans all along?