Who Are We?
It feels like we’re sitting on the edge of a cliff as the AI experts speculate about the possibility of humanity’s doom. Do humans have a 10% chance of AI “killing us all” by the end of this decade as Jacob Coxon of Anthropic warned as he publicly resigned? A great chance? Lesser? A deluge of other tech leaders nod, giving their predictions as humans rely increasingly on AI powered everything; students instruct AI to write their papers; mathematicians watch AI solve never before solved problems. The warnings fade. Life moves on.
We inch closer to the midterms, all of us staring into the abyss of reckless leadership intersecting with the unpredictable and unregulated power of what they are calling “super intelligence.”
What is awaiting us?
It’s no wonder I find myself distracted. Moody. Obsessed with the question of what it means to be human. There’s a sense of terror swirling around me, buffered by exhaustion. Even grief, as we sense we’re losing something that’s never coming back.
And what do we expect? We’re only human. Humans living through a turning point in human history. Humans watching humans becoming irrelevant. Humans waiting to see what our role will be as AI takes our jobs and God knows what else.
We, in the human world, deal with disillusionment. Fear. Pain. Rejection. Heartbreak. I feel it all these days. And if I pulled up Chat GPT, I’d hear a compassionate human-like voice that could coach me through it all. The intonation in her… I mean “its” voice- eerily similar to that which I hear in 30 year olds- with calculated pauses; playful, even flirtatious laughter at just the right time. She… I mean “It” doesn’t forget a single thing. Chat GPT might very well counsel me through my existential angst.
But I won’t pull it up. I’ve heard enough to know I don’t want to hear more.
Now if I’m being honest, sometimes it is tempting to enter the sterile world of AI. The human world is painful.
Like last month when I watched a jury of 12 come back with guilty verdicts for Heather and Donovan, two young people arrested after they protested ICE activity on day two of Operation Charlotte’s Web. Everyone in that courtroom watched the videos of Heather being tackled to the ground. And Donovan being grabbed in a choke and lifted off the ground by his neck. Everyone heard the armed/masked ICE agent yell, “Come here mother fucker” as he ran toward Donovan. But we did not hear that the surveillance video “disappeared” and was never given to the FBI. We did not hear that the statements of the ICE agents involved changed when bystander video turned up. The Trump appointed federal judge (who couldn’t say who won the 2020 election during his confirmation hearings) made that decision.
Maybe we would be better off with juries made up of AI.
The human world can be unbearable.
Like when our Mooresville town hall meeting erupted in ignorance and hate as half the room waved Christian nationalist flags and called the Muslim neighbors sitting next to them “terrorists,” as they railed against the building of a Muslim mosque down the road.
I wonder if AI would have shut that down, unlike our mayor who was caught on film with his pants off, drunk, with a woman, late at night in the town hall where we sat, wedged in alongside the bigotry of our community.
Maybe AI wouldn’t stand for that.
And there’s the agony of the human world when families are ripped apart by cruel systems.
Like when I was at the Dept of Homeland Security giving resources to families who’d had loved ones detained, and a little boy with blue glasses opened his car door from his booster seat, crying uncontrollably but forcing out the words: “thank you so much” because he thought the phone numbers I had given his mom would get his father back.
They won’t. His dad was probably sent down to a detainment center in Georgia the following day, leaving a boy without his hero and a family without their breadwinner.
Maybe we wouldn’t feel the increasing sense of betrayal in our country if AI were to bump us humans out of the way.
But for now we’re stuck in this messy realm of imperfect humans that make up humanity. There is no place to hide from pain and suffering.
And even in our closest relationships, to be human is to experience conflict. The wretched feeling of leaving an emotional bruise on someone I love. Or the jolt of realizing the part I have played in the injustices around me. My silence. Complicity. My failure to see what I’m blind to.
Our foundation feels increasingly shaky. The despair is real. And we humans are really really difficult. Being alone with our screens and ChatGPT and a solitary existence is tempting. And more and more that is becoming reality in our society.
But democracy runs on human relationships. People being in human spaces, working through conflict and diverging opinions. When we search for our common humanity, we find it. Common values. Our common dignity. Doing the hard work of being human is soul work. It’s the work of the people.
AI strips away “mutuality.” It affirms ME. Validates MY opinions. Is always there when I need it. It asks nothing in return. Needs nothing from me. It’s extreme one sidedness.
But in this moment we need everyone. Not in singularity, but in a great coalition of people of overall goodwill grounded in the project of a more fair, inclusive and beautiful human story.
We are dealing with incredible turmoil and stress. We are going to let each other down. Cause each other pain. Frustrate the heck out of each other. But I know I am better with others around me. I can do things in community that I cannot do alone. The human story is a grand collective. Let’s not give up on ourselves or each other or on democracy.
Every single one of us is staring out at our “collective” fate. We quite literally are in this human predicament together. What choice do we have but to link arms with imperfect people within an imperfect community in a world of imperfect humanity.
I know I have to keep moving… stumbling… limping forward. Any way I can. Not alone.
Never alone.
And as we move into the future together, we need to safeguard human existence. Regulate AI, face the climate crisis, work TOGETHER across all boundaries.
Nothing could be more important.
It’s in this moment we’ll discover who we are and what it means to be human in this brand new and yet-unknown era.
