Why A.I. Won’t Make Us Dumb

Years ago, it was suggested Google would make us dumb. It hasn't. Some suggest the same with Artificial Intelligence. Not likely. Here's why.

Photo by Halima Bouchouicha on Unsplash

The idea, as some have posited, is that we will end up becoming dumber as we rely more and more on AI, from the workplace to ordering our groceries. If it were true that humans are as programmable as a computer, this might be somewhat valid. Fortunately, it’s not.

Some journalists and pundits predicted Google and search engines in general would make us stupid. They too, have not and aren’t likely to.

Most of these proclamations are made by those in the technology sector; software engineers and scientists, coders. This is not a negative or statement against them, it’s just that coding is about solving problems and software can do that wonderfully. The humans that write a lot of code, who spend years and decades doing so, tend to think in more computational terms.

They see the wonders of what can be done with code. After a while, like any profession where one specializes, much of anything happening in the world is seen through that lens. That becomes a key element of how we create and define our realities. It is natural that some coders might see AI in this way, especially those who are most reliant on its success. Much of this is driven by our various biases. We all do it, often without realising it. It’s part of who we are as a species.

Then there are always those in society that have fears and concerns over a new technology. Some justified, some not. Such fears however, are healthy so we debate the good and bad of any given technology. Change at a sociocultural level is hard and we all see it in different ways.

In the humanities from archeology to anthropology and sociology, one is trained to see these biases and attempt our best to address them and step back ourselves. Other sciences take similar approaches. It’s why all sciences have hypotheses and theories and why we love to debate.

It’s part of the reason that the sciences of the humanities is so important and becoming more so in the digital age as technologies become deeply entwined in our daily lives, from play to work. As a digital anthropologist, I look at the statements by some leading AI thinkers and see their statements for what they are; made within the context of what they know and the realities they live in. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s perspectives.

But if we apply what we understand about what it means to be human, and we look at past proclamations about what technology would do to us, we can apply some critical thinking and historical context to better understand these predictions by coders. And it becomes a little less dystopian and definitive.

Some believed, as the telephone came more broadly into society, that we would soon be talking to the dead. So far, this hasn’t happened.

Coders, in their activities of coding are more used to seeing the world as problems to be solved for (that’s good) and definitive statements. Coding is an exciting and incredibly rewarding practice, and while it requires critical thinking, it is done so within a defined framework. The same as lawyers, surgeons and plumbers.

Why AI Won’t Make Us Dumb

The broad leap, the main assumption of those proposing that AI will make us dumb is that humans only act in two states. Like and/or statements in coding. Zeroes and ones thinking I call it. Since most of us tend to apply first order thinking in our lives, because it’s a low cost of cognitive energy and as we tend to trust captains of industry and what we socially deem as smart people, we can fall into the trap of thinking this is the case. It is not.

Humans are a weird bunch. In addition, we all live in different realities. To find commonalities, we tell stories and form social groups, communities. We also know that when greater restrictions are imposed upon us, we tend to become more creative. Sometimes we react quickly, sometimes, at macro sociocultural scale, this can take decades or more to change a system. We typically label that form of creativity as revolutions.

Humans are inherently creative. It’s why we dreamt up culture as a survival system as we realized biological evolution (subconsciously) was too slow for us. It’s why created art, literature, architecture and of course, all the technologies that make all of this possible.

So it’s a bit odd to think that if we all have personal AI agents for work and life, that AI will answer and do everything for us, that we’ll just devolve into some lumpy, sludgy thing shuffling about the planet. Some of us might, teenagers spend a few years doing it and they turn out just fine in the end.

Culture is the ultimate arbiter of any technology and AI will be no different with regard to AI. We will only find AI makes us dumb if we let it. More likely, is that AI will augment us. Over time, we will perhaps, be able to take greater cognitive leaps. To learn in new ways and create in different ways.

This is what we’ve always done. It’s not easy, it can take a long time and is often rather untidy with social frictions along the way, but manage we do. Technologies are not static. They are as mutable as we are because while they change us, we also change them in a feedback loop.

For AI to make us dumb, it would mean all of humanity agreeing on one simple thing; we are willing to hand over all freedom, all forms of creativity, all ideas, emotions, to a singular technology. That we would all agree the status quo is fine thank-you and can I have my tea now. Such an act would be quite intellectually and culturally astounding. Turns out, we all have opinions.

Our very humanness makes it entirely unlikely we will ever submit ourselves to algorithms and silicon.