Keep Thinking

Recently, I had a conversation with my Extension Literature teacher about AI and its efficacy and worthwhileness in day-to-day use. Her perspective was one I fear is quite popular yet silenced. The view is not that AI isn't capable, but rather that it poses an imminent threat to humans who use it — the threat to stop thinking. I wanted to take time to write about this conversation because I think it's a deeply interesting one.

The greatest tools humans have ever invented are the ones that don't directly replace the human's role in the process but rather elevate it. A great example of this is the typewriter replacing pen and paper. The typewriter still requires the human; it just allows them to work faster. I initially asked my teacher whether she viewed AI in the same way she views using a word processor. I draw on this because, to me, it's what I envision AI being — something that doesn't replace the human but elevates them. She then pointed out the key difference: AI replaces thinking, whereas the word processor merely replaces pen and paper. This point struck me as quite interesting. Thinking. This led me down an internal thought process of trying to work out how my view of AI could be so different from hers. In my day-to-day, I didn't feel like AI was replacing my thinking — rather, I thought it was doing the opposite. So what's the issue? I think the issue is that my teacher views all thinking as worthwhile in the process of reaching a destination. This falls back to the classic "The journey is more important than the destination" argument. Unfortunately, I think there is a major gap in this kind of mindset. I think about the recent decision from the Trump Administration to try and bring more low-level manufacturing back to the United States. The quite glaring, obvious objection to trying to revive the American steel industry is that it simply wouldn't be worth the time of the American workforce to invest effort into that. Surely the American worker is more capable than to spend their days making steel? The same, in my opinion, is true with AI. We as humanity have to be willing to acknowledge that some thinking isn't worth our time. There are some things that are better outsourced in the name of efficiency. In saying this, the article is titled "Keep Thinking" — so what is the counterpoint? Well, there is some high-level thinking that I think we as a society also need to acknowledge can't be outsourced to machines. I use "can't" quite strictly here, because the kinds of thinking I will be referencing are deeply human, philosophical, and creative.

I recently wrote an article about the liberal arts being more important than ever in an age of AI, and this article is, in a sense, the sequel. I am almost certain that the liberal arts will turn out to be the most valuable area of study in the future. It is with great disappointment, however, that I posit the very people who will be most valuable in an AI era are the ones who fear using it most. The creatives — those with a love for what makes us human: writing, music, art. These are the people who seemingly have the greatest issues with AI but would benefit most and be able to get the most out of it. If you fall into the category of "a creative," I strongly encourage you to at least try seeing what you can now do faster, so you can focus on what you really care about.

This leads me to my next point, which is that we need to work out what we actually care about. This, to me, is quite self-explanatory and evident. If you've ever looked at an output from AI and thought, "that lacks taste," that's probably where you need to step in and do the thinking. A great example of this is what, in my opinion, AI struggles with the most: idea generation. As it turns out, something trained on every idea in human existence isn't very good at making new ideas. This, to me, is due to what I call the "Experience Gap." Often, when we think about life, we say things like "The more experience the better." This, whilst true for humans, could end up being the opposite for AI. Being trained on everything ever written comes with its drawbacks. The biggest one being that the best ideas often come from a lack of understanding and knowledge. Recently, we explored Marxism in Extension Literature — not necessarily as an economic system, but rather as a different way of thinking about cultural and societal structures. We explored the idea of how strange and distant our society would seem to someone from a completely different system. However, the ideas from that completely different system present a perspective that, while it may seem wrong at first, may actually bring much benefit in making that "strange" feel "normal" within our own society. This, to me, perfectly articulates what makes humans so important. What makes our ideas so powerful is that they come from a naivety of reality. In fact, an idea not making sense practically or logically yet feeling correct — that proves the point.

So what's next? Well, first work out what you love doing. What do you love thinking about? Then pursue that and work out what tools can let you pursue that work further. AI presents the opportunity to let humans think even more than we currently do. The alternative, however, is far more detrimental. We must keep thinking and always remember technology's place in the world — a bicycle for the mind.