AI Will Liberate Us From Thought Or Completely Enslave Us To It

Many ridiculous things are being written about Artificial Intelligence. One of the most absurd yet widely held notions is that “AI isn’t progressing towards human-level intelligence; it is evolving an alien type of intelligence.” 

Such nonsense follows from the premise that “AI isn’t a tool – it’s an agent.” Starting there, it’s a short step to imagining a bogeyman: “We are summoning to Earth countless new powerful agents that are potentially more intelligent and imaginative than us, and that we don’t fully understand or control.” 

Fearmongering about AI is foolish. AI is a tremendous danger, but not in the way experts and popularizers think. As creatures of thought, AI strikes at the root of what we have been as humans – creatures of thought -- and therefore poses the greatest challenge to what it means to be a human being. 

Why? Because AI is a replication and huge enhancement of “higher thought.” It’s the ultimate projection of our idolization of the cognitive abilities we evolved as Homo sapiens, and which made us such a powerful and destructive species. 

Let’s be clear, Artificial Intelligence has nothing to do with intelligence. Intelligence is the fitting, harmonious and equitable use of knowledge, skill and information. And it emanates from a totally different capacity in the human brain than AI has or will ever have. 

Therefore, as long as we define intelligence in terms of cognition, we will never liberate ourselves from the conditioning and darkness of thought, and will become totally second-hand humans, slaves to the machines that we’ve created in our own image.

What about the claim that “AI is an unprecedented threat to humanity because it is the first technology in history that can make decisions and create new ideas by itself?” 

AI can only make decisions to the extent that we program it with the power to do so. The idea that AI is “sentient,” that it has “agency,” is specious, arising from either a projection of fear or an unintelligent program.  

Sure, people can program computers to make drones that decide who to kill in war, as Israel has already been doing in Gaza, but that’s just piling one human stupidity on top of another. As long as the roots of war remain unexamined, the methods of murder during war will be unlimited.  

AI can find novel combinations and approaches that humans haven’t thought of, and is already doing so, whether with games such as chess or Go, or new drugs. But AI will never have the capacity for insight, beginning with the insight of how to use AI intelligently. 

“Agency” is all the rage these days, but I’ve yet to hear a clear and cogent definition of it. It’s one of those words, like “self” and “consciousness,” that we assume we know, but have many different meanings. Indeed, the more we try to define what we mean by words like agency, self and consciousness, the more unclear and uncertain the words become. 

Essentially, agency is a trendy word for the self and its illusions of choice. And the self is the continuity of images, words and the content of our conditioning, nothing more.

Though few philosophers refer, much less defer to the Cogito anymore (“I think, therefore I am”), we’re still living in Descartes’ world. Not only because Cartesianism remains the cornerstone of science, but more importantly because the separation between the thinker and thought is the sine qua non of the self and agency. 

“I think” is a given to most of us. It doesn’t matter that there is no separate self that thinks, and that the “I” is a program of thought. Some people know this at the intellectual level, but ending the fundamental, universal psychological separation of the self is still rare and difficult. 

Therefore our problem is not a network or information problem, but a failure to be self-knowing and gain insight into the nature and limitations of thought, whether human or artificial thought. 

Thought’s inherently separative nature has led to runaway fragmentation. That’s the fatal flaw in human nature and the root cause of why we are “continuing to spew greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, pollute rivers and oceans, cut down forests, destroy entire habitats, drive countless species to extinction, and jeopardize the ecological foundations of our own species.” 

So it’s obtuse to say, “the code on your smartphone determines which algorithms run your life, and who controls your attention.” It only does so to the extent that we are tied to our cells, and don’t turn the damn things off and walk and sit in nature with all our senses open.  

AI is compelling the many to ask questions that only concerned the few in the past. Why are humans petty creatures of thought when we can be noble human beings of awareness? 

And why is the human brain dominated by the mechanical functions of symbolic thought when it has the capacity to be the vehicle for the immense energies of ongoing creation? 

AI will liberate us from thought, or further enslave us to it. Self-knowing (which is not cumulative and has nothing to do with knowledge) and the complete quieting of thought in attention, is the way ahead, for the individual and humanity. 

Martin LeFevre 

lefevremartin77@gmail

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