4 abilities that AI will not be able to replace you: make demands, maintain imprecision, give meaning to things, cope with changes.

Predicting the future is a thankless task. Just as people 20 years ago could hardly foresee the dramatic changes that mobile Internet would bring to human production and life, we cannot now outline what the world will be like 20 years later. The only thing that can be confirmed is that the future technology, concepts, and lifestyles are far beyond imagination - even with our wildest imagination.

The human brain is more sensitive to negative information, so pessimistic voices tend to prevail more easily. When it comes to the future, we can't help but worry that the rapid iteration of AI technology will make us lose our jobs, rather than looking forward to the liberation and empowerment it brings. There will definitely be unexpected surprises in the future. When I was a child, my father kept saying that I "didn't even dare to kill a chicken". He believed that killing a chicken was one of the necessary skills for a man: otherwise, how would you drink chicken soup? At that time, he could never imagine that the modern breeding, slaughtering and distribution system would completely liberate people like me who "can't even tie a chicken".

So, let's get back to the good news. The good news is that life will be easier in the future. AI only takes over those repetitive and non-high-value jobs that we are not good at, just like today's accountants no longer have to use abacus to keep accounts and can devote more time to more valuable work. Humans always have some unique gifts that AI cannot replace.

In this article, I want to share with you four abilities that will be the foundation of human survival in the future.

1. ability to raise demands

AI can already help us solve many problems. The specific process is one question and one answer: you first ask a question, AI fully retrieves and integrates information, and then gives you a solution. In terms of problem solving, AI has unlimited potential, and many judgments are enough to match professionals (in the near future, it can even surpass professionals). But have you noticed that the order is always humans asking questions and AI solving problems. In other words, humans are the only driving force of this process. Will there be a day when asking questions can also be handed over to AI, and it can ask questions and answer them by itself?

I want to tell you that it won’t. All "real problems" can only be raised by humans themselves.

"Real problems" means that there is a real need, a problem that has not been solved. Such needs and problems are all about people, and only people can perceive them. Suppose I am sick and the doctor recommends that I go to the hospital immediately, but I don’t want to give up my daily life arrangements, so I will ask: Is it possible to change to a treatment method that does not affect my normal schedule? Because I feel that I have a need, I will ask this question. AI will not proactively ask this kind of question, it has never thought about it that way.

A neurosurgeon once asked AI to predict what important problems will arise in the field of neurosurgery in the future. As a result, AI only summarized the known problems in the existing literature, but failed to create new problems.

The reason is easy to understand, because AI cannot feel "pain". It is neither hungry nor thirsty, has no social pressure, and will not get tired even if it works 24 hours a day. As long as humans don't tell it, it will never be able to put itself in a person's shoes and understand where a person is uncomfortable or what they desire. It can only use its intelligence and provide better solutions after receiving clear instructions from humans. In other words, AI's continuous progress is driven by human needs.

The best thing is that human needs are inexhaustible. You may worry that one day humans will not be able to come up with any new needs? How boring it would be if everything you want could be satisfied immediately? - If that day really comes, you will definitely hope that boring life will become more interesting. Look, isn't there a new demand? Humans are such an "unsatisfied" species. At first, they just need to have food to fill their stomachs. Later, they need to eat delicious food. Later, they need to eat healthy and balanced food. In the future, they may also want to eat with personality, artistic conception, and culture... Life is endless, and needs are endless.

Being able to keenly perceive and propose needs will become one of the core abilities of future humans. In the past, we had a negative perception of this ability, and many parents criticized their children for "being too troublesome." The implication is that we have limited time and energy, and we cannot serve personalized needs in a refined manner. We can only meet the needs of the "greatest common divisor" in a general way.

In the future, the ability to solve problems will be maximized. Whoever can propose more valuable needs will lead the progress of the times. The character of "discovering problems" should be better protected and encouraged, even if it can only be expressed as dissatisfaction with life at this stage - being able to perceive these dissatisfactions is our value.

2. ability to remain imprecise

Humans also have an ability that is difficult for AI to replace, which I call the ability to "remain imprecise".

What is imprecision? Simply put, people make mistakes, and they make mistakes when their consciousness is difficult to control. Let a computer copy a text of 10,000 words, and there will be no mistakes in every word; but if it is manually rewritten several times, mistakes will inevitably appear in each copy.

How can making mistakes be considered an ability? But think about it, how did the evolution of life happen? It is because some mistakes occurred in the gene replication process that caused the traits of each generation to have slight variations. Then through natural selection, some useful variations were retained, accumulated from generation to generation, and finally formed the evolution of species. If genes are always 100% accurately replicated, evolution will not happen. So from another perspective, making mistakes is innovation.

In this sense, rigid AI is destined to be inferior to humans in creativity. We used to regard making mistakes as a bad thing, but precision is not the track of humans. It is better to allow those wonderful mistakes to happen and dig out unexpected possibilities from them. In fact, a lot of poetry and romance come from inadvertent "mistakes".

Today, when people praise something for being interesting, they will say it is "abstract" or "absurd". In other words, they are not in the normal thinking system. Interestingness lies precisely here. A kind of absurd beauty. If you think according to precise algorithms, the more you calculate, the less you will think of this. In the future, those who dare to make mistakes will be the most vital creators, inventors and adventurers.

Some people may wonder whether AI will develop a set of algorithms that specifically "make mistakes"? In fact, deliberately made mistakes lose the value of the mistakes themselves. "Mistakes" are not made under the premise of not seeking to make mistakes, because of intentional or unintentional coincidences, and the freedom and surprises of the hand. If you don't believe it, you can ask AI to make a joke for you, and you will find that the jokes are all expected. In those fields that require nonsense, brain holes and surprises, AI is far behind human imagination.

As AI can do more and more things, human inspiration is becoming more and more valuable. Inspiration is not logic, and cannot be calculated by algorithms. It will only fall in a trance at a random moment. Even after a person falls asleep, he or she may get inspiration in a dream that puzzles him or her during the day. The classic school of psychology, psychoanalysis, has the technology of dream interpretation. Scholars of this school believe that when people's consciousness is "relaxed", more important information will be revealed. A person's slip of the tongue may reflect his or her true intention at the unconscious level. Humans are experts in creating mistakes and even more experts in interpreting mistakes.

Nowadays, many people have to make full preparations before trying to do something, for fear that something will go wrong. When things don't go according to plan, they feel very uncomfortable. Instead, I encourage them to throw away the plan sometimes and let the mistakes happen naturally. This is precisely the unique value of human beings - the correct world is the same, and mistakes will create more surprises.

3. ability to give meaning to things

What AI cannot replace is the ability of humans to give meaning to things.

Although meaning is an abstract concept, we can understand it through specific examples. The struggle of athletes in the Olympic Games can make hundreds of millions of people excited. But think about it carefully, how fast can a person run, how high can he jump, and what actual value can he create? In terms of speed alone, no matter how fast a person runs, he can't be faster than a car, right? However, when Usain St Leo Bolt shortened the world record of the 100-meter race by 0.1 seconds, you will still be excited about it - as long as humans break through a little limit, the meaning will immediately be different.

So, what is the essence of meaning? It is "related to me".

As a member of the human race, "I" feel a certain connection and resonance. Imagine that when you are sad, someone says to you "I understand how you feel". At that moment, you will feel that you are seen by another kind of person, and you will experience many common experiences as a human from his tone. He may have experienced similar situations as you, and his emotions are related to you, and you will immediately feel that you are no longer alone.

Imagine that you are facing an AI, a machine psychologist who looks like a real person, and he says "I understand how you feel". You may think: This sentence is very considerate, but unfortunately it is not from the heart. It is not a person, how can it really understand my feelings? Has it ever had a native family? Does it know what it feels like to be short of money? Has it rented a house or been heartbroken? It has no human experience, but the algorithm gives a "should" answer according to a certain routine. Although this answer is impeccable, it has nothing to do with you, so you will not feel seen. This is why I believe that psychological counseling is difficult to be completely replaced by AI. The meaning of a conversation between a person and a machine is in no way comparable to that of a conversation with a real person. The natural emotional connection between people will be our natural advantage in the future.

This is not only true for psychological counseling, but also for any field related to human experience. Cloud of Poems Short story by Liu Cixin imagines a battle between technology and aesthetics: there is an alien civilization interested in ancient Chinese poetry, and believes that it can create better poems than Li Bai with its own technology. Isn't poetry just the arrangement and combination of Chinese characters according to certain rules? So the aliens exhausted most of the energy of the solar system to list all possible combinations of words. They believe that in this vast database, there must be unprecedented poems that are unparalleled and unmatched. But here comes the problem: how to retrieve these poems? In other words, who can distinguish better works from meaningless arrangements and combinations? At this point, no matter how magical the technology is, it is powerless. The aliens finally chose to give up.

What works are good works should be decided by those who appreciate the works. Only when a person receives the information conveyed by the work and touches his own experience, he will be moved. When he is moved, the work will have meaning.

Have you discovered? This is a new type of creative relationship, and the meaning of the work is given by the receiver. This is because the threshold for creation will be lower and lower in the future. AI can already write poems, paint, compose music, sing, and generate videos that are indistinguishable from the real thing. If it continues to develop like this for a few years, all kinds of works will be everywhere, and creation will become less and less valuable. What is really valuable? It is the eyes that identify and appreciate the works. The competition in the future will be who can better appreciate these works, who can discover the most moving stories, pictures, music or images, and then connect more people. Just like today's food broadcasters, in an era when food is no longer scarce, they inspire more people to resonate by sharing their feelings about eating.

In the future, the definition of "creation" is likely to change. A person who feels and appreciates with his heart is not unproductive, he is just engaged in another form of creation. Just like we feel excited when watching sports games, inspired when talking to people, satisfied because of being loved, and shed tears because of understanding, every bit of meaning you feel is creating resonance between people.

4. ability to cope with changes

Finally, I want to tell you that people have the ability to cope with changes. Bad things happen, and through our response, we can strive for the best result - if the result is not good, continue to deal with this bad thing.

If you feel that this statement is a bit like chicken soup, you might as well read the experience of psychologist Viktor Frankl. He was a Jew, and during World War II, he and his family were sent to concentration camps. After regaining his freedom, he learned that his wife, parents and brothers were all killed by the Nazis. This is probably the most painful change a person may experience. But Frankl said: "A person can be deprived of anything except the last freedom of this person - the freedom to choose what attitude he holds in a given environment." After experiencing this disaster, Frankl still survived tenaciously, continued to write academically, completed a large number of works, and re-established a family until he died at the age of 92, ending a perfect second half of his life.

No matter what happens, people have the right to make choices: choose to accept the status quo or deny it, choose to adapt to changes or escape, choose to spend the present actively or immerse themselves in worries about the future. Through these choices, we can gradually push our lives in the direction we want. Everything bad can turn into something good, and everything good can become even better.

We can always choose a better response, which is the fundamental reason why humans can survive the disasters.

So, is there any bad news in the future? Yes, and it may even exceed our imagination, bringing huge challenges and shocks. But I am still optimistic about the final result. No matter how the environment changes, people always have the ability to embrace change, use it for their own benefit, and live the life they want. On this point, I have full confidence in human beings.