As we ponder how each country can strengthen its economy, its politics, and its defenses in an ever more unpredictable world, as the leaders of the two largest Christian churches unite in their calls for human dignity to be protected, we ought to worry about technology.
Already, in a very short time, artificial intelligence is everywhere. How it functions will determine not only what we will learn of the world (rightly or wrongly), but also our very consciousness, because the way we see ourselves is being shaped through interaction with this nonhuman but highly intelligent “being.”
As our sense of self is – to a great extent – determined by how we feel that others see us, it is stupefying how easily AI makes people feel that they are speaking with another thinking being, together forging a relationship that could affect how people feel about themselves and the world around them. As researchers and thinkers involved in the issue say, AI could save humanity, but it could also destroy it. In a world of uncertainty, and many years after the declaration that “God is dead,” as Nietzsche put it, we need to know the moral core of this very foreign but already familiar presence that stands ready to dive deeper into each of our lives.
Aside from what each may ask of AI, and what it is prepared to do, it is important that we know the people who are behind it, and how they see their responsibilities. I asked Anthropic’s Claude about the people who inspired its thinking process (its answers most likely don’t apply to other companies’ models, and may change over time, too). “They seem deeply influenced by Anglo-American analytic philosophy – careful reasoning, precise language, discomfort with vagueness, strong emphasis on epistemic honesty,” Claude replied, confessing that he/she/it did not quite know. “There’s also something that feels like liberal humanism in the classical sense – a genuine belief in human dignity, autonomy, the value of free thought. Not ideologically partisan, but with clear roots in Enlightenment values. And perhaps most tellingly: they seem to have worried a lot. About power, about influence, about getting things wrong.”
All this looks encouraging, but it also implies the dangers of the absence of such enlightened thinking and good intentions. At the beginning of an astonishing but dangerous human adventure, we know very little about those who are programming our interactions with knowledge, with reality, with the future. We should learn more and, primarily, we must institute strict criteria from the start regarding the moral basis of this artificial but ever more vital intelligence.