If AI Has the Power to Destroy Us, Can It Save Us?

Honestly, AI can be downright terrifying — everything revolutionary is. Each revolution is in lockstep with the annihilation of what used to be or so it would seem. The nostalgia of an AI-free past is already in the zeitgeist, but is fear the best response? Usually not.

Perhaps curiosity is.

Sure, curiosity may kill a few cats, but hopefully you have a properly functioning pre-frontal cortex and a healthy disposition toward ambiguity and critical thought. The problem is most rational people are seeing all the bad. And there is much potential for evil, but there is also hope. This is our modern Pandora’s box. Whether we like it or not, it is here, and we must contend with it. We can’t simply turn our back and ignore it. AI is already becoming ubiquitous within the context of our realities from deep fake video generation and the algorithms on Spotify to healthcare and manufacturing.

AI will impact everything — some impacts will be overt while others will go unseen. It sounds terrifying, and it is. However, AI has the potential to make our societies better, and that is where we should focus. We now have these tools at our disposal to curate what could be a modern Renaissance and gilded era across multiple nations and societies.

The Philosophy of Dualities

Rooted in the existence of opposing or complementary pairs that coexist and interact throughout human experience, thought, and existence, duality is playing a role in how we shape our reality and thoughts around AI. At a personal level, we have all had the troubling experience of hypocrisy or cognitive dissonance, the discomfort of holding two opposing beliefs. Topically, the Republican and Democratic parties can fit the narrative of dualities — though opposing, they need each other to exist despite extreme hostility. Without the one, the other simply can not be. It is important to establish how dualities create and maintain each other. Dualities play a significant role in our understanding of the world and how reality can be shaped.

Other famous examples of dualities:

• Good and Evil: This pairing raises questions on the origin of morality, absolutism, and the complexities that arise during hard decisions. Think of the trolley problem from your Psych 101 class and how you have to decide between the lesser of two evils. Through the duality of good and evil, we consider existentialism, ethics, the justifications for evil, and the variability of morals throughout history and across cultures.
• Subject and Object: The duality of the subject and object are intertwined in a reality emerging from their sheer existence. The subject (the perceiver or observer) and the object (the perceived or known) shape our understanding of reality through the interplay of a subject’s interpretation and the characteristics of the object being known. This duality speaks to the quest for truth, the construction of knowledge, and the reliability of our perceptions.
• Order and Chaos: The tension of this duality explores how structure and randomness are inherent to all aspects of life: creative process, nature, and social organizations. The dynamism that our world is known for can be directly attributed to this duality. Without chaos, our world would lead to stagnation, rigidity, and joylessness. Without order, our world would be unproductive, undisciplined, and dissolve into a maddening reality. Without this duality, we wouldn’t be human. This duality postulates questions on balance & harmony as well as human agency, free will, and transformation.

Perhaps, AI is part of the ever-present challenge of man vs. nature. However, it seems that the ubiquity with which AI has sunk its tendrils that it is now forever a part of this world as we know it. It doesn’t seem like we can shake it, but perhaps we can shape it.

The Skeptical AI Champion

Stoicism champions personal virtues, self-control, and acceptance of things we cannot change.

From a stoic’s perspective, it may be advised to accept the nature of AI. With the advent of AI, it is now a part of our modern world and something that we must recognize despite what feelings it may produce. We can’t change the existence of AI, so we must shift toward using it in alignment with our values.

Further, we should not rely on AI to provide value. We should be driving ourselves to cultivate values of wisdom, courage, justice, and discipline. This will enable us to promote ethical use and avoid predictably awful outcomes. Stoicism promotes mindfulness and self-awareness; this means the utility of AI should be intentionally done with thoughts on the impacts of privacy, bias, and human dignity. We should be critically evaluating what we are feeding to AI and consider the limitations and biases in machine learning.

Understand that the power of influence and control that you have over AI is going to be limited. Bad things will happen as will good things. Within our control, we should be focusing on transparency, quality, and accountability. This will require emotional resilience and the ability to manage our reactions to the outcomes produced by AI. AI should be seen as a tool and leveraged as such. Stoicism would encourage us to champion its utility without becoming overly reliant or attached. Most importantly, it would ask us to recognize and talk frankly about the limitations of AI and how it shouldn’t be allowed to replace critical thinking and empathy.

Diffusion of Innovation Curve

Riskiness & Adoption

The diffusion of innovation categorizes the adoption and acceptance of technology among people within a society. The categories are determined by the willingness and readiness to adopt new technology among distinct groups. The curve typically is broken into five distinct groups:

• Innovators: These are risk-averse individuals that embrace new technology with gusto. They actively seek out early-phase technology that hasn’t fully matured or has yet to become widely accepted. This is a very small percentage of people.
• Early Adopters: This group tends to be people that would generally fall into personalities like visionaries. They closely follow innovators and are influenced by their experiences and recommendations. They tend to be more discerning and come from a higher social status. Their adoption of technology generally creates momentum in the market and drives acceptance across other segments.
• Early Majority: The early majority is a larger portion of society. They adopt more established technologies. This group tends to follow their peers when adopting technology. They tend to be more cautious and rely on expert recommendations and social proof before adoption.
• Late Majority: This is a segment that tends toward skepticism and cautiousness. They generally wait for a higher level of maturity and acceptance before adoption. They are driven to adopt based on conformity and remain competitive in their field.
• Laggards: This is the last segment to adopt new technology. They strongly prefer traditional methods and older technology. When they adopt technology, they do so reluctantly and generally, when the benefits of adoption outweigh the perceived risks.

When it comes to AI, the trajectory will likely follow what we know about technology adoption. Innovators and early adopters will be experimenting with its capabilities and pushing the boundaries of its utility. Industries with high innovation rates like technology, research institutions, and sectors like finance comprise early adopters of AI. These organizations can take on such an exploration due to highly skilled labor forces, infrastructure, and motivation to keep competitive.

As AI matures, it will become increasingly accessible and demonstrate its value to the early majority. For example, we are already seeing industries like retail, manufacturing, and customer service utilizing AI to enhance efficiency, automate processes, and drive insights.

The late majority and laggards will be adopting AI at a slower pace. They will wait for evidence of its benefits and an established track record of secure and successful implementation. They will benefit most from AIs that are developed to be user-friendly and integrated into technologies that they already use.

AI is Neither Inherently Good Nor Evil

Hanlon’s Razor advises that we assume incompetence before malice. The properly attributed quote is, “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” The same may apply to the utility and outcomes of AI. Surely, people will do bad things with it, but they will also do great things with it. AI can destroy and create; however, the utility of AI should be handled with skill and mindfulness.

Anyone can prompt a bunch of AIs and generate enough content to produce something great once. However, we should be focusing on utilizing AI in domains that we are experts in. Business analysts have a far less chance of creating an engaging and aesthetically appealing suite of apps than a mobile designer would. Mobile designers are skilled in user experience, they understand color theory on screens versus print, they understand how users read, and they know how to design navigation that aligns with user expectations. Subject matters experts that adopt AI will reign supreme — this will be true in nearly all fields. AI can be a springboard for creative and strategic brainstorming. It can also act as an unpaid assistant to handle menial tasks. The opportunities for AI are seemingly endless, and we should be at the forefront of exploring them mindfully, transparently, and most importantly, sensibly.

For example, if everyone is given construction tools, can we all build a house? Can we all destroy a house? The answer to both of those is technically yes, but at different levels of magnitude and over different durations of time. We want people to leverage AI in fields of study they know and are impassioned about. As it is being echoed by visionaries and early adopters, AI is not here to replace you, but someone in your field using AI will.