At a time when technological advancements are being met with mixed feelings of fear and excitement, this book explores whether AI will remain a mere tool or become something beyond humanity, and emphasizes the need to prepare for its future.
It is no exaggeration to say that the 21st century has been dominated by the keyword ‘AI’. What is it that so many people are so enthusiastic about and can’t wait to use it in every field? Thanks to rapid technological advancements, artificial intelligence is no longer a fiction of scientists’ labs or movies, but a reality that we can easily encounter in our daily lives. Our smartphones’ voice recognition, search engines’ autocomplete, and even social media’s recommendation algorithms are all products of AI.
But first, let’s be clear about what artificial intelligence is. The relatively recent AlphaGo incident and the fact that Watson is on the verge of entering hospitals in Korea have certainly raised public interest. However, the image of artificial intelligence imprinted on the public through the media is somewhat unorthodox. Sometimes, they treat A.I. itself as a conscious life form and a “Big Brother” that is about to take over. Do you look at your home calculator and feel a sense of dread as you think, “How does it do such complex calculations in less than a second?”
Let’s take a moment to think about what AI is. First, let’s stop thinking of robots and sci-fi movies when we hear the word “artificial intelligence”. We’re talking about something much broader. It’s a tool that’s already in your life, and you’re probably using it whether you realize it or not. Artificial intelligence is broadly defined as the ability to analyze data, find patterns, and make predictions or decisions based on them. As a result, many tasks are being done with the help of AI to get faster and more accurate results.
John McCarthy, who first coined the term in 1956, used to complain. “As soon as something was implemented with artificial intelligence, no one called it artificial anymore.” Nowadays, artificial intelligence is much more relevant to our lives than ever before. Therefore, it’s important to recognize that it’s already a valuable and useful thing, and to stop overthinking it.
Let’s go back to the “Big Brother” story. In George Orwell’s novel 1984, a huge structural force called Big Brother restrains and monitors the public through telescreens. In modern times, the public is projecting this image of surveillance and restraint onto A.I. In other words, A.I. becomes so advanced that it surpasses human intelligence and becomes something above Homo sapiens. While this may be a vague fear of unfamiliar technology, the important question that is missing from this worst-case scenario is: “Why would AI want to be above us?” It’s not unlikely that there is a motive. We move when the light is blue and stop when it’s red, but no one thinks they’re being “ruled” by a traffic light. Traffic lights are just an answer to the question of how to rationally maintain order in society. This is because the systems that manage the complex transportation networks of large cities are the domain of “intelligence,” which seeks to make rational choices, and not the domain of “consciousness,” which is full of desires and emotions.
In fact, this intelligence-consciousness dichotomy is not perfect and can be broken at any time. But for the sake of simplicity, let’s divide human thinking into intelligence and consciousness. Artificial intelligence is what tries to surpass humans in this realm of “intelligence”. They don’t have consciousness and, as we said before, they’re no different from calculators. Recently, artificial neural networks that mimic the human brain have become the mainstay of AI. However, the brain they mimic is primarily the neocortex, which is the most recently evolved part of the brain in human history and is responsible for rational thought, sophisticated computation, and learning. It’s the realm of apparent intelligence. The realm of “consciousness,” on the other hand, is still a mystery. So what can humans with consciousness do that technological imitation is so clumsy?
Professions that are currently considered highly knowledgeable may become mere menial labor for A.I., and the whole system of jobs may collapse. On the other hand, the world is in a constant state of flux, so it’s possible that there are political forces that could prevent the indiscriminate development of AI. In one scenario, the computational power of AI will grow exponentially as technology advances, and there will be people in different fields who will benefit from it. Most likely, they will be the ones who know how to use it well and capitalize on it. Eventually, the haves and have-nots will be separated by their ability to use AI, and the barriers to this polarization will be greater than before. As the technology becomes more advanced and people are able to make the “intelligence” component of the AI they use entirely their own, they will begin to upgrade their intelligent bodies, and eventually transhumanism will take hold.
This scenario could be dismissed as the stuff of science fiction. However, the reality is that we are approaching a time when the lines between humans and machines are blurring, and we need to think about the social and ethical issues that may arise. We need to prepare for the changes that technological advances will bring and build new norms and institutions accordingly.
So, what do I want to emphasize? No one is in a running race with a car. It’s not about being faster than the car, it’s about what you do with the car’s speed. The same is true for AI. We’re not talking about an artificial “consciousness,” so we should treat it as a tool and use it to our advantage. In the future, accountants are likely to lose their jobs to AI. But what about accountants who know how to use AI? Have they lost their jobs or have they transformed into another profession combined with AI? The power of Big Brother is unleashed through AI, but we need to focus on who is behind it. Once again, AI is not something to compete with, it’s something to use.
At the end of the day, to survive in the AI era, we need to develop the ability to understand and utilize machines. As technology advances, the role of humans will become more creative and focused on solving complex problems. This means not just AI as a tool, but as a powerful partner that expands our thinking and capabilities. How we grow with AI will be a key challenge for future societies.
