How to stay human in the age of artificial intelligence

Since the machine started talking to us, the topic of artificial intelligence is back in fashion. Some even expect humans to be replaced by a super-intelligence. The ideas are anything but new. They rely on us forgetting that human life and coexistence are not limited to thinking and talking.

Computers have been calculating faster (and more reliably) than humans for a long time; that's exactly why they were invented. No one was bothered by this: The use of punch cards and magnetic tapes was too complicated, the large devices were too unwieldy. But even when the IBM computer Deep Blue defeated the then world champion Gary Kasparov in chess in 1996, there was no great excitement. It was quickly understood that chess is nothing more than an optimisation problem in a rule-based environment. Deep Blue was able to analyse and evaluate over 100 million positions per second. The world champion could no longer keep up. The fact that Deep Blue's successor Watson prevailed against the defending champions in the 2011 Jeopardy game on American television did not make it onto the German front pages.

But now that the machine tells stories and paints pictures, researches and writes newspaper articles, analyses company data and handles corporate planning, the excitement is huge. Newspapers are publishing weekly newsletters; companies are developing AI strategies, and the valuation of digital companies is reaching new highs. There is a gold-rush atmosphere. At the same time, however, the working world of the cultural and economic elite is changing: suddenly they themselves are the subject of technological progress, which they previously only described or managed. Concern about this high-risk technology is also gripping the intellectual elite, because they themselves no longer understand what is happening. Much of the unrest could have to do with this.

But not only that. Knowledge, reason and language are the very definition of being human. We are homo sapiens, the knowing human being. We are the animal rationale, the rational living being. And according to a definition that predates Aristotle, we are the zoon logon echon, the living being that has language. Language seems to be the core of what we are. Without language, our knowledge and reason remain mute. With language, we enter into contact with the world and with other people.

Now, thanks to an incredibly large data set and even greater computing power, the machine has managed to reformulate language as a mathematical-statistical phenomenon and impress us with its analysis. We hear it speak. And we like what we hear, as it reflects all the digitised works of world literature and the findings from scientific publications of an entire generation: "The spirit of the world from the machine", as the philosopher Hegel put it for the cover story in March 2023.

Is the machine becoming human? Are we on the verge of an intelligence explosion? - This question is also an old one. As early as 1965, the British mathematician Irving John Good predicted the invention of an "ultra-intelligent machine" that would be far superior to humans in all intellectual abilities. This machine would be the last invention that humans would have to make, after which they would no longer be needed.

Ten years ago, the Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom, who teaches in London, described artificial intelligence as the most promising way to develop such a "superintelligence". As a transhumanist who expects and welcomes the improvement or replacement of humans by a technologically optimised life form, Bostrom even began to consider whether and to what extent humans would be obliged to treat thinking machines according to human moral standards and, if necessary, to be of service to them.

However, the debate sometimes feels as if the last hundred years of philosophical reflection have not taken place. They take Hegel's "world spirit", which is now over 200 years old and is supposed to be the realisation of reason in world history, translate it into a logical-mathematical problem and expect that the algorithms of superintelligence will one day solve it.

Ludwig Wittgenstein already knew over 100 years ago that human problems are not nearly solved when all scientific questions have been answered. And anyone who has listened to the philosophers of existentialism, critical theory, phenomenology or post-structuralism over the past 50 years knows that the questions of reason, language and the human being are not easy to answer: Human existence is not limited to intelligence, and our access to the world is more than just analysing and processing data.

Philosophy calls the phenomenon that human beings do not just happen to have a body, but that they are this body, "corporeality". Human existence does not result from a combination of hardware and software but is expressed in a body that is sentient and limited in space and time.

In our sensitivity, we encounter the world and others without being able to defend ourselves against them. "Man bathes in the elements", wrote the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. We metabolise our world long before we analyse it or talk about it. We have no control over our pleasure, and even less over our pain. In physical pain, we are exposed to the world and cannot free ourselves from it. Where the machine would switch off a malfunctioning sensor. we cannot. We age. No upgrade and no update possible. Even a simple organ replacement is life-threatening.

The spatial and temporal limitations of our existence make it unique. No one can replace me in my body. And I cannot replace anyone in their body. Everyone must die for themselves; everyone must endure the fragility of their own existence until it is no longer bearable. It is not possible to copy the software onto another (identical) piece of hardware. Our body bears the traces of our existence.

This gives meaning to human existence. It is in caring for the lives of others and dedicating our own lives to them that human community is created. Being able to dedicate our lives to only a few is not a problem of our limited computing power, it is the beauty and tragedy of human existence that we call love. The machine cannot love because it is not finite, it cannot suffer because it has no body, and it cannot die for the other because it does not live. It may be able to think and talk, but will it ever understand what it means to love, suffer and die? We hardly understand it ourselves.

The danger of artificial intelligence is that we fall for the machine in all its eloquence and sophistication, that we allow ourselves to be fooled into thinking that all questions can be solved and that humans can be replaced simply because the machine fulfils some functions of our everyday (professional) lives faster and more accurately than we could. When we replace humans with machines in our everyday interactions, we deprive ourselves of that surplus of humanity that is not needed for economic transactions and is not absorbed in intelligence or language.

The office is not just a place where quarterly financial statements, construction drawings, contracts or newspaper articles are produced. Schools and universities are not just places where knowledge is imparted. And doctors' surgeries and clinics are not just places where illnesses are treated. Everywhere we meet people in their individuality, with all their idiosyncrasies, strengths and weaknesses. Even if machines one day become better managers, engineers, lawyers, journalists, teachers or doctors, they will not become better people. But they could prevent us from becoming them, because the machine illusion of perfection makes us forget and unlearn humility and generosity in dealing with the weaknesses of others.