The Human Edge: Leveraging AI for a New Era of Productivity and Innovation

I've always considered myself a fanatical Humanist because humans are awesome. We are just hairless monkeys that can imagine things in our folded brains, add some oposable thumbs, and give us enough time and we can reshape the reality around us and even create new realities inside boxes of metal and plastic.?

We've outdone ourselves when we consider how much we have tweaked and tailored the world to our whims, haven't we? Take a look around – we've guided nature into giving us juicier fruits, tastier veggies, and domesticated wolves that won't think twice about fetching you a ball to your hand and provide unconditional love towards you. And let's not forget our flair for mixing up metal alloys, whipping up brand-new materials, and even tapping into the energy of the atom to power our ambitions. I'm practically a cheerleader for Team Humanity, pom-poms and all, and I'm not quitting anytime soon. Sure, we've got our blunders and a list of global catastrophic risks to tackle in the next century, but honestly, can you name another intelligence in the cosmos that's as wildly captivating and downright entertaining as we humans? I don’t think so…

They took our jobs

?But even though it is fascinating and I will always be Team Human we have to come and face the truth of one of the the big questions that we will need to ask ourselves many times throughout the next years: What is the Value of a human? And I’m not asking monetary wise, we already got the value of a statistical life , but what is the value of a human and by consequence of humanity? Because as we enter into the age of AI with great strides we are seeing how this intelligence we have created is automating more and more tasks and jobs that today are being done by humans.?

Now, this is nothing new we have been automating and outsourcing jobs from humans to our technology since we developed the plow or we used animals to push wagons. But more and more we will be seeing jobs being automated and what took a large group of people to achieve a task will be possible by one person or in most cases 0 humans as part of the task itself. So what is so special about humans??

Where is the value of having humans in organizations if you could automate every single job eventually from the CEO to the reception desk could be a single digital entity or the agglomeration of different systems that have a legal name and representation as a company in the marketplace. How do we interact with such an entity just as consumers??

What happens if that automated company is more effective and efficient than its competitors do we legislate against it? What if the company's AI has enough money and the capacity to influence and persuade humans to change regulations and protect this AI??

How will the global economy work if large swaths of humanity are unemployable through no fault of their own? Will we be forced to radically change our economic institutions implement a universal basic income for every human and make the most out of this automated economic system? I think this is a possibility, even though empirically, UBIs haven’t fared all that well honestly, I have seen this question being asked since 2012 and I haven’t seen a better solution so far, of course, this debate is longer but I wasn’t following it before or probably didn’t even care about it.

In the meantime, one pathway that I see for humans to overcome the challenge of staying productive at this age is to use these tools as much as possible. Humans using generative AI are up to 66% more productive than their baseline human peers and will be the more productive ones in the coming years as AI tools improve so you either find the tool that better suits the needs of your job or the tasks that you do and see how to enhance yourself with this technology.?

The Acceleration of Evolution

Enhancing, is a very peculiar word, because, I think it describes a lot of what the human condition is all about ever since we started developing technology it has been all about making lives easier to survive and thrive and we have done an excellent job so far we are currently living in the best time of human history of course with pitfalls and things to improve but overall I woulda rogue we live today better than how humanity was 50 years ago.?

Not only are we living in the best of times I think we are also living in the fastest of times human technological progress is starting to reach a tipping point where things seem out of control and out of our capacity to grasp all the things that are happening – just try to follow the latest developments in AI or Computer Science– you’ll go mad.?

This acceleration and the gradual move towards this tipping point reminds me of Ray Kurzweil’s 6 epochs of information evolution about how information has been stored and its evolution from information being stored in the chemistry of the universe and then its jump in complexity to wards biology and DNA then a jump in complexity towards brains then in technology and eventually a merge of these last two and finally an awakening of the universe itself with a burst of information imbued into matter.

Now, do I think this is kind of wacky? Totally, but I think it points more to a trend of how things have progressed and it goes back to our questions about humanity’s value and the solutions to avoid our obsolescence through the merger of ourselves and our technology. This is not that much of a foreign concept when you start to think about technology in the bigger picture beyond just AI and computers and how they’ve always been a fundamental part of our lives and part of our nature, so much so that some people believe technology to be an entire realm of nature by itself.

The Next Steps in Human Evolution:

In this symbiosis of humanity and our technology, in this case, AI it might be the first step of humanity to accelerate and integrate other technologies into our biology as well, we have talked about genetic and biological freedom before, how with better tools of genetic engineering humanity is leaving behind biology as a shackle for limiting ourselves. But with technologies such as AI being embedded into ourselves we could also accelerate so many other transformations into what could be a new stage in human evolution where we took biology to its limits but to be able to keep up with our accelerating demands and needs we might need to go beyond biology as a species.?

The potential for us could be almost endless beyond the limitations of our bodies and our minds the possibilities start expanding in so many realms that we currently don’t even know where the future might lead us.?

This new era is shining with thrilling possibilities. Imagine a future unbounded by the physical and cognitive limitations that have defined human existence. The synergy of AI and human intelligence could unlock realms of creativity, intellect, and capability previously unimagined. The prospect of transcending our biological roots holds the promise of a future where the only limits for humanity will be those of our collective imagination. As we venture into this uncharted territory, the paths we choose could redefine the very essence of what it means to be human, opening doors to possibilities that today, we can scarcely conceive.

Ethical Considerations:

Even though that last part sounds beautiful and enticing personally I believe that’s a future worth striving for as a species. I am concerned about how we get there. Because we are facing challenges today and will be facing even more when we think about the economic and political institutions we built our societies and our lives, once again we circle back to the question of the value of humanity because does the future even need humans? more and more our societies have increasingly equated the value of human life with productivity, a perspective that carries profound implications in the age of artificial intelligence.

Viewing individuals primarily through the lens of their economic output has led to a devaluation of aspects of human life that are not directly quantifiable or profitable, such as creativity, empathy, and community engagement(no we are not talking about people running social media accounts for corporations as community engagement). As AI advances, automating tasks once considered the exclusive domain of humans, this productivity-centered view presents a significant challenge. It risks rendering vast swaths of the population 'economically redundant,' exacerbating issues like unemployment, and social inequality, but also a more deep impact towards a loss of self-worth and identity in a lot of humanity. Because let’s be honest for so many people their job IS their identity, so we are faced with a deep conundrum here.?

The increasing reliance on AI and automation could deepen the societal rifts between those who can adapt and those who are left behind, urging a reevaluation of how we define and appreciate the intrinsic value of human life beyond mere economic metrics. This reevaluation is crucial for ensuring a future where technology enhances human society rather than diminishes it and leaves us behind in the dust.?

How do we construct innovative and better societies and economic systems that can harness the great changes and benefits that AI and other technologies will bring forth, but at the same time can survive and withstand the disruption that all of this will inevitably bring??

Don’t get me wrong I’m all in for a post-human utopia but if we don’t take steps now human value will only decrease more and more if we keep thinking that productivity is the unit of measure of human value.?

Next Steps for the Human Experiment

Humanity is at a crossroads on how to tackle this topic do we just passively watch from the sidelines or do we engage and act to preemptively develop new ideas and possible solutions on how humanity can keep being relevant in the coming years as a force of economic and technological development that keeps developing solutions for our species problems. If not we might risk losing our place as the dominant intelligence on this planet.?

As mentioned above using AII might help you in the short term when these tools are very reliant upon us but sure enough AI will outpace humans and eventually it will outpace humanity if we are not prepared and have some of these questions figured out the path towards a brighter future for humanity will be a very painful one or we might not even get there.?

I believe we need to reevaluate some of the most essential economic and political institutions we’ve had for the past couple of centuries because an existential disruption is being developed as we speak and the technology is advancing way faster than the ideas on how to adapt to this technology. And I sure as hell have no clever solutions to this, only questions If you have any ideas or thoughts about this or you believe yourself to be a valuable human share with me your thoughts, that would be cool of you.