Preserving human cognitive capacity in the age of AI
Read the full manifestoNew AI technologies are a breakthrough that brings their share of progress and enables things that were deemed impossible only a few years ago. But as these technologies grow, the space humans occupy shrinks. Mass layoffs sweep industries, artistic work is undercut, social media is flooded with fabricated content. We’re promised limitless productivity, effortless prosperity, but what do we have to exchange for the privilege?
The Industrial Revolution was framed in the same way, promising that machines would set humanity free from work. In reality, it was marked by rampant poverty, homelessness, abandoned children, and epidemics. While a select few enjoyed the marvels of modern comfort, the majority worked alienating jobs in dreadful conditions, and Art became a luxury.
When meaningful work is delegated to AIs, we don't just give away jobs, but also agency. When junior tasks are delegated to machines, juniors no longer learn from them. When we offload our intellectual or creative endeavours to technology, our human capacity erodes. The less we do it, the less we know how to do it, and the more we benefit from delegating it.
In a capitalist world essentially driven by profits, wealth goes to those who own the means of production. In this sense, replacing humans with machines reinforces this ownership significantly, offering means of production that deliver consistently 24/7 without breaks or demands. The benefits of educating a population whose labour is no longer needed would diminish. We cannot be confident that the large-scale, systemic changes needed to steer away from the dystopian futures we have imagined for decades will happen in time.
While bringing about large-scale societal changes might seem out of reach, we are free to decide how we interact with this technology in our individual capacity, and weigh carefully what we lose (for instance in learning experience) to the convenience of delegating to Artificial Intelligences. It is choosing the difficulty of doing it ourselves over the convenience of being served borrowed answers. It is choosing to invest in building our agency over feeding our ego.
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