AI: child of the insatiable human mind

The problem isn't technology, it's our relentless pursuit of "harder, better, faster, stronger".

Why is the human mind drawn to the Internet like fish to water? Perhaps it’s because the digital world responds so well and too quickly to the mind’s desire for novelty, its craving for constant sensory stimulation, its propensity to engage in endless questioning, its need for answers, and its hankering for perpetual motion. The human mind hates stillness; it loves busyness and being overworked.

Before I discovered the Internet at the age of 18, I got my kicks from renting movies on VHS every month (it was a real treat), listening to the radio, going to a library, perusing magazines, baking, and journaling or writing poetry whenever a question started swimming around too viciously in my noggin. Meeting new people was also incredibly exciting and rewarding. Before the Internet, I also got my kicks from getting drunk, picking fights, bulimic feasting, fantasizing to the point of mania or ruminating myself into a depressive funk. These days, most of my sensory excitation comes from my cellphone.

The energetic investment feels lower with the Internet and everything arrives so quickly, so I don’t need to delay my requirements for drama or sensory gratification. My dopamine receptors have adapted to looking at a barrage of images for emotional arousal or clicking “Buy now” and having a carton of cookies at my doorstep within a few hours, or the latest box office hit ready to view on my TV. If I’m experiencing a weird physical malady, I ask AI to diagnose it and let me know what my options are for treatment. It’s all too damn easy.

Easy isn’t necessarily bad. I’m sure someone said “This is too damn easy. I smell a rat!” when washing machines or kettles first became part of our world. But the washing machine and kettle have been serving us well thus far, haven’t they? And, in many ways, hasn’t the Internet been pure magic? Hasn’t it made your life so much more convenient?

The Internet and AI are neither good or bad, healthy or toxic. It’s our minds that turn the technologies into pandora’s box. Human consciousnesses is a restless and hungry beast, and when it doesn’t have a good beastmaster (your wiser more prudent self), it’ll do everything it can to avoid pain, chase pleasure, and attempt to have it all.

Our minds are insatiable. They operate like that Daft Punk track – “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”. That entire song has only two verse variations. The first, repeated three times at the beginning is:

Work it, make it

Do it, makes us

Harder, betterFaster, stronger

The second verse, repeated 14 times goes:

Work it harder, make it better

Do it faster, makes us stronger

More than ever, hour after hour

Work is never over

In 2007, Kanye West sampled this track and repurposed it as “Stronger”, which (with more lyrical variation) made it to the top of the US Billboard Hot 100 and UK Singles Chart, remaining on both charts for more than 35 weeks. Clearly, it resonates with the crowd.

It doesn’t exactly get me excited, yet I can’t get that song out of my head because it’s in synch with my mental hardware. More, better, best, more, more, more, more, more, rule the world, me – master of the universe……rroaarghhhhhh…..that’s my mind when the beastmaster is MIA. My consciousness gets it – harder, faster, better, stronger. It’s the drive of our collective consciousness that led to the invention of the washing machine and kettle in its ever-sophisticated iterations, and it’s this same drive – responsible for the building of empires and the atom bomb – that gave birth to the Internet and AI.

Today, many of us lament the all-pervasive infiltration of the Internet in our lives. Most of us are terrified of AI and what it heralds for the future of humanity. But the Internet and AI are simply mirrors of human consciousness, born out of the voracity and gluttony of our own minds. We’ve made a paper tiger out of the Internet and AI when the real threat in fact originates from within. If we don’t want technology to rule our world, we’ll need to start doing a better job guarding and guiding our own consciousness and attention. We’ll need to stop responding to messages of harder, better, faster, stronger and instead welcome gentler, good enough, slower and more vulnerable.

Like Icarus whose wings melted – causing him to plunge to his death – because he could not resist flying closer to the sun, the overly ambitious, overworked mind will eventually result in the destruction of the person and the tribe.

So why not try going a day without entertainment or activity, no music, no movies, no games, no news, no drugs, no chit chat, no writing; a day without buying, a day without Googling, a day without drama, a day without housekeeping, a day without work? Let’s see if we can just breathe, empty our minds and do nothing. See how difficult that is? It sure ain’t easy for me.

Good luck earth people!