For us every day turns into a quest,
To survive changes and still be our best,
Yet our world becomes the unimaginable,
Where creativity is no longer tangible.
-By Mancas Luana Nicole-
I have once read a book called “The future of the human mind” by Michio Kaku, an astounding literary work exploring the immersive depths of human development in a fascinating correlation with technological advances which utterly captivated me through its bright and colourful descriptions about what the future holds for us in terms of education and consuming knowledge with the assistance of astonishing artificial intelligences created to mimic the human’s behaviour in order to supposedly contribute to its growth. But does AI really contribute in our benefit?
This is a question that has been roaming my mind for many years, not only because technology and AI are visibly beginning to conquer society, but because despite their existence being perhaps one of the most revolutionary developments that ever took place in history, they are unfortunately often used for the amiss purposes, or by the wrongpeople.
What does the future of our own mind look like? The answer relies in our circumstantial adaptability to change. If each individual would adapt quickly and be open to change in favor of themselves and the population, it would create a cohesion between people's ideas and theories, resulting in the increased evolution of the world and of human species. Knowledge, science, would have a sudden and undeniable rise, due to the combination of all the theoretical and practical sources in the world. It would mean that each of us, being willing to adapt to new conditions of life, new realities, new discoveries more quickly than we have ever done before, could accomplish almost anything we set out to do in a shorter and more efficient time, yet still keep our humanity intact. Artificial intelligence is a true source or power that we acquired through knowledge and intelligence generated by our brain that is able to affect the world completely. It is up to us whether this source, like any other sources we dispose of, is used in our advantage or not.
Everything we know can be both a threat and an opportunity at the same time, with history being our ultimate witness. From the Industrial Revolution between 18th and 19th century which displaced traditional craftspeople, led to harsh working conditions but at the same time created significant mass production, urbanization, economic growth and advancements in various fields, to the power of the Atomic Bomb reverberating in the 20th century and the rapid evolution of the internet in the 21st century, almost everything good or bad had a shadow of the opposite. What is to be admired is that we managed to somehow adapt every single time. Therefore, I solely think that adapting to AI will be no bigger of a challenge than the others before us. The only concern might be our mental and intellectual resilience to such an alteration of the world.
Could we still consider technological progress as a human necessity for evolution if it is not counterbalanced by moral values and human ideals? The craving for continuous progress, in the absence of fundamental human needs: family, faith, kindness, emotions, feelings, creativity, expressivity, could not distinguish us from AI at all. That is exactly why the search for perfection where it does not exist can lead to the alienation of these essential human ideals. In everything there must be a balance, a balance between needs and desires. When fundamental, basic emotional needs are lacking, we may as well stop trying to create robots, as we have already become one, we may as well stop to polish artificial intelligenceaccording to the human model because we are already the ones who embody it. In concluding this idea, we must always think about cause and effect. This is the only way to realize whether the effect of our choices and actions is the preferred, beneficial and human one. AI will only ever become a threat when our morals, sense of creativity, individuality, perpetuation of tradition, feelings, creation and deep admiration of art will threaten to leave us. Otherwise, it certainly is one the biggest opportunities we ever created for ourselves thus far. It can endow research and enrich knowledge more easily, it can conceive a portal between universal wisdom and common sense, between imagination and reality, between future and present. It can predict, it can give helpful advice, it can reveal astonishing, extraordinary information and facts about life or unravel the immersive depths of a spectacularly written book d, history truly puts its stamp on the questions frequently posed in the present, sometimes answering them indirectly through past events.
Trying to draw on the history lessons we learn in high school, I will give just a few examples that support my historical point of view. Firstly, adaptation to the urban environment was one of the biggest and most drastical changes in the world. Many events contributed to this gradual development, not least the Industrial Revolution, as a result of which urbanization left its mark on the world’s population. The shift from manual to mechanized work, the fluctuation of people’s daily activities (they had to work more in the factories) made city life suddenly more crowded.
These people had no choice but to adapt to existing conditions. They didn’t have time to ask themselves, whether they wanted to do it or if they were willing or not to, they did it out of pure instinct, automatism, out of duty to themselves, out of self-interest, or sometimes they had no other choice, as society imposed it on them…
Moreover, technologies were developed for space exploration and beyond. Maybe in hundreds or thousands of years we will get to travel to other galaxies or live our own Star Wars movie, but if we manage to achieve such a feat, we will need to adapt to a new environment, in this case the cosmic space and therefore we will be highly dependent on technology, a notion that 100 years ago was alien to the world. Humans are already making serious, various attempts to colonize other planets, so it is not out of the question that a phenomenon as such chould happen at some point. However, the point here is not about travelling in between galaxies or who knows what else imagination can come up with. It is about change and the fact that throughout history, humans, in order to evolve, have adapted and accepted it. An issue often neglected today is the exact opposite of what I noted in the previous sentence. Changes are happening in the world but we remain the same, we keep the same closed mindset, maybe we do not want to open our eyes, or even worse, we do not realize they are closed at all.
Many people choose to give up on following their dreams precisely because it is about transformation, about taking risks, about leaving behind certain aspects of their life, of their personality they used to hold on to that do not help them progress, it is about taking responsibility, which scares them. It scares us. It does not mean that these fears define us. The power to adapt to the uknown, to the new, has a greater impact than what we think, it takes on infinite possibilities.
Nevertheless, what are the inter-related factors that influence a person’s adaptability? First and foremost, it lies in the emotional resilience of each person, but the good thing is that id does not remain constant forever, it can be modifies and much improved. So, we are not lost causes. We can learn to adapt, to face new challenges interwoven with our lives in multiple divergent ways. What exactly are those ways? For the suspense, I will come back with the answer later.
The question is, what is the correlation between our ability to adjust our decisions, reactions and the external environment? After all, this article is not only addressing and proposing improvements only in our own values, but also improving the society we live in by addressing minor problems causing major effects and presenting concise and viable solutions corresponding to them. Thinking rationally, we would discover that by changing our mindset, we can change our reality. How? If each individual would adapt quickly and be open to change in favor of themselves and the population, it would create a cohesion between people's ideas and theories, resulting in the increased evolution of the world and of human species. Knowledge, science, would have a sudden and undeniable rise, due to the combination of all the theoretical and practical sources in the world. It would mean that each of us, being willing to adapt to new conditions of life, new realities, new discoveries more quickly than we have ever done before, could accomplish almost anything we set out to do in a shorter and more efficient time. Do you realize how far we would go, how fast we would develop? If every one of us stepped out of our comfort zone in the pursuit of progress, we could start to hope for the possible colonization of Mars, for instance, or any other great accomplishment that is currently only in the far-future planning stage. What would happen if we sped up the process?
However, could we still consider progress as a human necessity for evolution if it is not counterbalanced by moral values and human ideals? The craving for continuous progress, in the absence of fundamental human needs (family, faith, kindness, emotions, feelings), could not distinguish us from robots at all. That is exactly why the search for perfection where it does not exist can lead to the alienation of these essential human ideals. In everything there must be a balance, a balance between needs and desires. When fundamental, basic emotional needs are lacking, we may as well stop trying to create robots, as we have already become one, we may as well stop to polish artificial intelligence according to the human model because we are already the ones who embody it. In concluding this idea, we must always think about cause and effect. This is the only way to realize whether the effect/outcome of our choices and actions is the preferred, beneficial and human one.
Now I feel compelled to come back to the ways to deal with the lack of circumstantial adaptability since no, I have not forgotten about them. The degree of malleability with regard to the unpredictable, the unknown, depends very much on the discernment we have in critical situations.
Supposedly, we are put in a situation where we have to make a quick, spontaneous decision, and the overwhelming pressure that is increasingly making its presence felt forces us to find the solution we think is right to the problem in a split second, instead of having time to think, to analyze the situation from all points of view. In this case, the experience of working and thinking under pressure does indeed count, but an even more decisive aspect is discernment, the fact that although we may not have the necessary experience, we know how to adapt instantly to the situation and circumstances in which we are placed. In my perspective, such a quality can be developed through lifelong learning, and I don't necessarily mean just learning at school, I'm thinking more of learning from experience, of stepping out of our comfort zone to do things that are important to us so that when we encounter them again, we know how to proceed. Wanting to put ourselves in certain difficult situations at a young age (for example, the courage to speak freely in public, even if it seems difficult and you are afraid to do it because it will help you later in your career) so that we can have tremendous character and intelligence development later on, when we end up asking ourselves what we want to do in life, what career we want to pursue and what we want to leave behind.
Reasoning, organizing ideas and thoughts, learning, are all corresponding elements of rational intelligence. In contrast, the reactions we have to various changes and events in life, and the feeling of fear that stops any motivation or attempt to adapt, are part of emotional intelligence. What role does fear play? It definitely fulfills a vital role because fear can induce an immediate reaction to imminent danger and, conversely, joy can reward adaptive behaviors. It creates a kind of indirect proportionality with the progress we have been discussing so far, but it should not necessarily be seen as a negative aspect, because fear often motivates people and makes us stronger, and when we overcome it, we can become invincible.