The AI Illusion: Power Without Sacrifice!

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This is the last of a series of articles (Index: “AI, friend or foe?”) that reviews AI; investigating what it is, how it is going to change our lives and how we can prepare ourselves to live in a world where everything seems to be moving at a warp speed.

There is a price to pay for everything in this life, and if you didn’t learn that throughout your life, your parents did a lousy job.

AI has developed a keen understanding of pattern identification, and it’s able to recognize them in the most complex formats… like storytelling. But if you are going to run to ChatGPT and ask it a question to figure out “what to believe,” you’ll be making a grave mistake. It only outputs probabilities of historic records and accounts based on what human knowledge has been able to muster; nothing more, nothing less. AI will not be able to fill the enormous gap between what you feel and what completes you, which is humanity’s evolutionary struggle since the dawn of Homo Sapiens. To get there, you have to do the legwork!

There is nothing new under the sun

Numerous times we have acknowledged that our consciousness recognizes patterns, and also that storytelling is the framework our inner “knower” uses to understand and map its way around reality and circumstances. Therefore, let’s pick an ancient story, one that reveals our present quest for identity resolution and most likely springs from the unconscious of the human mind.

There was a time when the entire earth spoke a common language with an identical vocabulary. As people migrated westward, they came across a plain in the region of Shinar and settled there. They told each other, “Come on! Let’s burn bricks thoroughly.” They used bricks for stone and tar for mortar. Then they said, “Come on! Let’s build ourselves a city and a tower, with its summit in the heavens, and let’s make a name for ourselves so we won’t be scattered over the surface of the whole earth.”

However, the Lord descended to look over the city and the tower that the humans were building. The Lord said, “Look! They are one people with the same language for all of them, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. Nothing that they have a mind to do will be impossible for them! Come on! Let’s go down there and confuse their language, so that they won’t understand each other’s speech.”

So, the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the surface of the whole earth, so that they had to stop building the city. Therefore, it was called Babylon, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth, and from there the Lord scattered them over the surface of the entire earth.
Genesis 11;1-9

Most commonly this tale has been proposed to be a mythical story about how the multiplicity of languages began; that’s what we tell children… there are profound truths in children’s stories and in the biblical text there is a wealth of wisdom you seldom find anywhere else. As a matter of curiosity, I challenge you to prompt ChatGPT to give you the lessons of the Tower of Babel in the Bible and, to top it off, ask it to map it as if AI is our Tower of Babel… but for now, continue reading!

Let’s write a contemporary and distilled version of this account:

There was a time when people thought that they had figured out what was the highest value to achieve. Technology and science had become the vehicle for their pride and their control over nature to all apparent obstacles. They told each other, “Come on! Let’s build the source foundation of all science and technology.” They did away with their heritage, which was the conventional way to advance in the world. Then they said, “Come on! Let’s build a system that defies all limits so nothing can stop us, and greatness will be ours.”

However, throughout creation, there is an order and a hierarchy and to violate it, is to invite chaos and entropy. “For people with the same language, there is nothing that they set their mind to do that will be impossible!” But, because they disregarded their own nature, and the orientation they must have for any collective endeavor to be successful, everyone went their own selfish way and their world collapsed.

The tower was left unfinished… even today, it stands as a the testament of humanity’s struggle to discern it’s orientation towards the Highest Good.

The arrogance of not aligning your aim to a greater good than yours

The original story of the Tower of Babel was most likely an origin-myth from Mesopotamia around 2500 BC; however, the version we get in the Bible is an adaptation made around 700 BC in the Babylonian exile of the Hebrews after the conquering and destruction of the first temple of Jerusalem. This story depicts the Babylonians as a people that did away with an aim greater than themselves and decided to make themselves the center and objective of their endeavors; a caricature of the Babylonians’ identity and their cultural attitude on the world stage. However, the refined tradition of the Bible uses this story to show the human drama of a recurrent social identity pattern unfolding of civilizations that reach their peak.

AI is our Tower of Babel, there is no "beating around the bush" about it. We are seeking ‘heaven’ (i.e. “highest value”) without picking up the tap. However, AI is not intelligent, is an imitation agent, and is copying us. There is a huge BUT, it can serve us IF WE AIM RIGHT… just about like everything in creation can, when we orient ourselves ‘upwards’.

The addiction for AI and our shortcomings

If you thought social media was dangerous to social cohesion, with AI you are in for a shockwave, tsunami-style. Most people I know are using it, and corporations are integrating it into all their middle management and human resources departments. They are doing it without any conscientious training and expecting employees to use it wisely.

Most people I have spoken to regarding the usage of AI and LLM (Large Language Model) say they use it to run through most of their written communications, emails, strategies and projects… however, there is a grave risk. It can become a crutch at first, but it can easily develop into dependency and diminish our confidence in handling everyday interactions and tasks. Why not? If you have an extraordinary assistant that can check all your interpersonal communications and review all your strategies or work, why not use it and harvest the benefits of all human knowledge? In the end, you will seem smart and competent; why not use it then?

Because it’s going to stagnate you!

If after 25 years of social media, there is a debate that teenagers should not be spending more than two hours on it, and some recommend mobile devices should be banned until 16. I guess it’s going to take us some time to recognize that AI is a power tool that should not be operated until at least 18 years of age... or maybe even more. Power tools are dangerous for people who are not conscientious and mature. PERIOD.

“Humans agree to give up meaning in exchange for power.”
— Yuval Noah Harari

Only a fool mistakes the disadvantage of that trait.
To quote the greatest psychologist, CG Jung, “beware of unearned wisdom.”
So, we are going to pay for it dearly if we do not grow up fast.

Next week…

One example: how to work with AI

How did I found ChatGPT to help me with this article about Tower of Babel.

EL PUNTO a la i

El historial de la columna está en www.cdots.substack.com por si quieres revisar artículos anteriores.