In a recent LinkedIn post, one of the leading voices in AI, Cassie Kozyrkov, raised this question:
“What happens when AI starts setting its own objectives while we’re still learning to articulate ours?”
If you’re a regular user of AI tools to research, construct, outline and even create, you’re likely doing very few tasks without running it through AI. Not surprising considering almost every bit of software we use now has a feature that invites you to improve it with AI.
The challenge is that while we’re getting AI to find what we need and do the thinking for us, what’s left for us to do? Decide if we like the outputs, and if there are multiple options, choose what’s best? Apparently, we’re not even getting that right.
As humans we’re instinctively geared towards simplicity and the reason for this is that we very quickly become overwhelmed when there are too many options to choose from. Think about going to a restaurant where the menu is six pages long. Guaranteed it’ll take you much longer to order your meal than if it was a simpler menu of only one page.
In using AI tools, it may be taking some of the complexity of evaluating different options out of the equation, but it isn’t necessarily making decision making any easier. If anything, it’s potentially the opposite. If even making a decision becomes too hard, will we start delegating that to AI too?
We could. There are already Agentic AI deployments, designed to automate decision making. It’s one of the leading trends in AI development, and one that a lot of companies are trying to get in on. Developing tech that can help us may be seen to be beneficial, but it’s not without raising some questions:
Let’s set aside the debate about the capabilities of AI and how we can potentially benefit from it for a minute. Let’s talk about how we could potentially be changing as humans as a result of it.
If we no longer train our brains to identify problems, if we’re only digesting solutions, and even letting AI decide which solution is best, how long will it take before we lose our ability to problem solve altogether?
In human studies, there is a lot of focus on aging. What speeds it up and what slows it down. Many people, when they retire from a lifetime of working, if they choose to do nothing more than sit around all day, tend to age very quickly. By contrast, those that stay active, both physically and mentally, generally live longer, happier lives. Our brains and bodies are designed to be active and stimulated.
With this in mind, what happens if we delegate all problem solving and decision making to tech? If we have no need to think independently, how will that impact the world around us? Will we lose our ability to research, make decisions, and problem solve? If that happens, where will creative innovation come from then? And how will we find solutions if we’ve lost the ability to identify the problem?