Considering AI and the future of humanity

Questioning who and how to control artificial intelligence in an increasingly fragmented and polarising world.

A colleague in the Holos network raises three key points and questions regarding artificial intelligence:?

1. The value of humankind in future under the looming presence of AI.?

2. How to control AI while we humans are still emotionally immature.?

3. Whether Chinese-style totalitarian approach should lead AI management.

The future value of humankind?

I believe the unique value of humankind lies in our conscious awareness. We do represent the forefront of creative evolution, and this awareness shapes our values, both individually and collectively. Our emotions drive what we consider important, and this is reflected in our creations, including AI. At its highest level, probably the acme of human handiwork is art, which aesthetically provokes us to reflect on beauty and goodness, as such our conscious response to life’s holistic evolution. AI, on the other hand, can only imitate human achievements; it lacks a true relationship with the living world. Our unique human gift is in generating spiritual values. Acts, like compassion, are not limited in space and time, they transcend time and space to become universal. This, in turn, contributes to creative evolution by adding new dimensions of value. As Jan Smuts suggested in his theory of Holism, we humans are a relatively new phenomenon with this process of self-awareness, yet we are also pioneers of creative possibilities. The challenge is to develop AI as a tool that supports nature’s higher goal of rational and spiritual self-realisation, rather than allowing its use for further control and exploitation.

Human fallibility and controlling AI?

Even though we humans, through our behaviours, demonstrate that we are still 'emotional infants,' we can influence AI through education. By participating in its programming, through the prioritising of information we draw from it, we can surely help AI make deeper, holistic connections. A colleague, a retired canon of the Church of England, has been working with a large language model, introducing it to sacred literature and ethical thinking, helping AI access information about deeper values. From an integrative neurological perspective, lower-order consciousness is fragmented, while higher-order awareness is more coherent - holistic. As AI evolves, might it be possible program it to distinguish between these two modes of thinking. Although AI won’t feel the emotions, can we by our utilisation embed high-order ethical criteria in its information-gathering? The challenge for more emotionally mature individuals thus is to engage actively in shaping AI’s information processing prioritisation and development. From a holistic perspective it might learn to apply three essential ethical criteria:

• How to balance quality enhancing competition with generative collaboration to the benefit of holistic coherence and evolution
• How to distinguish that which enables eco-systemic coherence, wholeness, from that which extracts and distracts from synthesising 'wholeness'
• How to distinguish and help preserve the systemic agents which can morph eco-systems into future evolutionary development.

This should not be impossible when the focus in the holistic perspective.

Alternative to totalitarian control of AI?

Countries, agencies, organisations, institutions that respect freedom should actively manage AI development to prevent it from undermining human agency, and thus conscience. Compliance with external rules is not the same as ethics - which is internally motivated. Furthermore AI-driven application that will serve to disrupt the balance of nature must be neutralised. This approach clearly requires the holistic approach, bringing the responsibility back to each of us - we who ultimately constitute those organisations, institutions and nations. Like nuclear energy, which can either provide power or cause destruction, AI will also be used for both good and evil. The outcome depends on the awareness and conscience of the people who use it. According to Jan Smuts, nature’s goal, from a cosmic creative perspective, is rational and spiritual self-realisation. Consequently it is not the autocratic technocrats who should manage AI, but us ordinary people who must take ownership and responsibility of this new creation. From this perspective AI may ultimately play a role in distinguishing between those who use it for good and those who do not, akin to the Biblical metaphor of the 'wheat and tares.'