Once AI can do everything for us, what do we do?

If the survival instinct becomes obsolete, it must be replaced by a new source of motivation, before we slide into physical and mental atrophy
To find our own life purposes, we need to rethink the education system and to partially ‘dedigitalise’ our lives

Patrik K. Meyer

Published: 3:30am, 11 Jun 2023

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The genetically programmed survival instinct is a core driving force behind human industry and creativity. Achieving food security, providing a comfortable and safe living environment, acquiring new skills and developing ways to facilitate and extend lives have been dominant human objectives for centuries.

Even when it comes to obtaining an education, the main goal is to acquire knowledge and expertise to ensure a safe, stable and long life for us, our families and communities. For millennia, survival had not been viable without humans making significant physical and mental contributions. Now, it is.

Physical work is being absorbed by autonomous robots, and cognitive activities in every imaginable field – engineering, design, research, medicine, art, sciences, entertainment, education, economics, art, spirituality, technology – are being outsourced to applications driven by artificial intelligence (AI).

Self-driving cars, healthcare management, financial planning, management of social media, designing optimised engineering structures, developing new materials and conducting sophisticated research are increasingly looking to AI. Art, literature, entertainment and numerous other fields will be dominated by AI too.

Automation and AI are reaching such levels of sophistication and becoming so pervasive that they are quickly making human performance and contributions look comparatively mediocre, if not insignificant. Crucially, human contributions are becoming unnecessary. As a result, humans will be relegated to performing increasingly simple tasks.

For example, the use of GPS (the global positioning system) eliminates the need for us to have strong spatial orientation, be familiar with maps or do complex calculations to optimise a trip. We just need to be capable of following a few extremely simple verbal or graphic indicators: go straight, left or right. That suffices. And with the introduction of autonomous vehicles, not even basic knowledge or skills will be needed to go from one place to the other.

Humans will not be required to make any physical or cognitive contributions towards their survival any more, making the genetically embedded survival instinct outdated. In principle, this can be considered tremendously positive news. But this good news comes with a catch: the survival instinct has been the core force behind human activity, creativity and productivity, and it will need to be replaced.

If the survival instinct is not replaced by a new source of motivation soon, humans can be expected to adopt the genetically prescribed path of least effort and risk. This passive attitude could result in physical decline and mental stupor, and ultimately humans degenerating as a species.

A declining capacity to focus and a growing dependence on AI-driven applications and technology to fulfil even the simplest of the tasks might be two of the symptoms of this stupor starting to kick in.

To prevent physical decline and mental stupor from spreading, it is necessary to develop people’s psychological ability to construct their own strong motivations and life purposes. This will allow them to remain active and creative, not for the purpose of surviving, but for the sake of experiencing, learning and growing.

For this reason, one of the changes needed is to fundamentally redesign the education paradigm. For example, academic education should stop being a process in which students accumulate knowledge and skills for the purpose of finding jobs, and transition into being an opportunity for those who wish to learn and explore for no other purpose than personal interest and fomenting personal growth.

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In some ways, this new learning process would be a mature version of children’s innate motivation to learn, driven by the desire to satisfy their curiosity and have interesting or fun experiences.

Another necessary adjustment is the partial “dedigitalisation” of our personal and social lives. Acting and interacting in the digitalised world give us many attractive opportunities unavailable in the real world. But it also tends to make our experiences shallower and less conducive to personal growth and learning.

Additionally, relying on “tools” that are smarter than the user can be expected to induce cognitive decay, as we outsource most of the cognitive effort to smart apps. To avoid this, we should tightly restrict the digitalisation of our personal and social lives, and, in some cases, partially dedigitalise them.

Could AI free us to return to the pursuit of wisdom?

Automation is relieving humans from most physical effort. AI is rapidly superseding and surpassing people’s cognitive activities. This technological success is making the need for human contributions to ensure their own survival unnecessary and obsolete. More importantly, it is making outdated humans’ survival instinct, the core driver for activity and creativity, leaving us scrambling for a new purpose in life.

More than 1,000 tech leaders, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk and AI expert Geoffrey Hinton, have called for a pause in the development and implementation of AI. This is unrealistic and unnecessary. What should be done is to take full advantage of these technologies, while also decoupling them from our personal motivations and goals in life. These should be defined by our potential and limitations, not those of an AI.

Patrik K. Meyer holds a PhD in politics and international studies from the University of Cambridge and is currently a visiting scholar at Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta, Indonesia