HUMAN AGENCY AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

HUMAN AGENCY AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Rahul Ramya

8th Dec 2023, Patna

The beauty and strength of human intelligence lie in its randomness and uncertainty and  not in its reliance on a set of predetermined data.

However, an alternative view argues that this argument grants humans too much credit for their intelligence. This view compares the human condition to that of the Archaeopteryx, a transitional species between dinosaurs and their avian descendants. While Homo sapiens sapiens have only existed for 100,000 years, our species has a longer lineage. The world we have created, however, is not suited to our evolutionary needs. Our biology is not adapted to the demands of the industrial world. This explains the prevalence of conflict within our species. We are not evolutionarily equipped to live in the world we aspire to inhabit. The next step in our evolution requires a new species, whether that be thinking machines or a fusion of emotional humans and algorithmic machines. All our seemingly random ingenuity draws inspiration from something pre-existing. We are not, and never have been, entirely original.

This view is overly narrow because all data is ultimately created by humans. The strength of human intelligence lies in its limitations, particularly its inability to process all pre-existing information. This very inability allows for seemingly haphazard and unpredictable actions that generate entirely new data, providing fresh material for machine intelligence. The fundamental difference between the two is that humans are never satisfied with past data. They constantly strive to achieve seemingly absurd things that are not only unpredictable but also chaotic and bizarre. This relentless pursuit of novelty gives birth to entirely new ideas and creations. One such example is the human decision to create an intelligence that is not only artificial but also superior to human processing power. The unintended consequence of this seemingly bizarre idea is the development of super-fast processing that facilitates the creation of entirely new concepts, which we call Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Large Language Models (LLMs), and so on. These are all products of the human mind's unpredictable and wandering nature.

However, proponents of the alternative view argue that the premise of the above argument is incorrect. They believe that all data already exists and is merely discovered and understood by humans. This discovery and understanding, they claim, are guided by a moral imperative shaped by primordial evolutionary tendencies and the fundamental urge for survival.

This conceptualization of reality, however, is far too vague and defines the world and its consciousness in terms of eternity. It serves as a discouraging philosophy that diminishes the significance of human agency by suggesting that everything is predetermined and humans have little to no impact. This dangerous philosophy has provided religious institutions with a powerful and potentially destructive tool. To safeguard human agency, we must expose and dismantle this philosophical construct that threatens human dignity.

In reality, discovery, innovation, and creation are merely different expressions of human agency's productive potential. While nature is undoubtedly a larger entity, its potential is only realized through the potent force of human agency.

Rahul Ramya