Will AI Rob Us of the Full Human Experience?
Chances are that you have bought into a popularly accepted notion which divides personality types into predominate logically analytical and technically oriented left-brained thinkers versus more creative right-brained free spirits, and that these are mutually exclusive traits
While this stereotype has some measure of validity, and while each side of the brain separately controls a variety of discrete roles and functions, both of those two hemispheres “collaborate” to fill in perceptual gaps that enable remarkable human intellectual capabilities.
As discussed in my 2018 book, “Thinking Whole,” the left hemisphere is broadly characterized as dealing more with individual steps of a process and piecing together small bits of data into linear and readily articulable thoughts.
The left hemisphere also coordinates with and depends upon the right hemisphere which is more sensitive to less defined features of thought including processing of images, patterns and visual comprehension: such as in recognizing faces, and reading emotions which together enables “wisdom.”
As psychiatrist and philosopher Ian McGilchrist points out, wisdom entails judgement, moral discernment, and the right-brain’s ability to perceive meaning, context, and consequence.
Here, while the two hemispheres divide the labor, the left side serves as emissary to the right side as the master which engages with the world as a living whole, sensitive to context, relationships and meaning.
Unlike the left hemisphere, the right side tolerates ambiguities and enables insight, empathy, moral awareness, and genuine understanding. But what about artificial “intelligence,” which functions without any brain at all?
McGilchrist, author of “The Master and His Emissary . . . How Left-Brain Thinking is Killing Civilization” and numerous other books, observes left brain functions and influences on cognitive consequences which offer analogies to AI which is also very fluent in piecing enormous strings of data together with pattern recognition including visual constructs.
AI, McGilchrist argues, is analogous to a brain lacking a right hemisphere to enable meaningful interpretations of information processing outcomes or judgements regarding whether they are either accurate or relevant to an inquiry.
McGilchrist believes this abbreviated version of intelligence has come to increasingly narrow our appreciation of context and judgement regarding whether the information outcome makes real sense to our human lives.
As consequence of reducing everything to the level of minute, mechanistic detail, increasing AI emphasis and influence poses risks of robbing modern society of the ability to understand and appreciate deeper human values whereby intelligence is being redefined in terms of speed and optimization: the ability to process vast amounts of information quickly, to generate output efficiently, and to scale.
Whole brain thinking, on the other hand, encourages us to observe our world, surroundings, issues and connections from larger and more dynamic perspectives before delving into details . . . a classic lesson of viewing a forest before becoming lost in trees and entangled in underbrush.
In doing so, we may avoid recurring problems made even worse by failed attempts to fix the wrong parts whereby a big picture perspective may also reveal that a “best solution” may be to recognize and exit bad environments that pose undesired risks.
Understandably and appropriately, many of us worry that AI is having innumerable and far-reaching disruptive effects on society – putting people out of work, adding to work and income inequality, and some will say, even pose an existential risk to the long-term future of Homo sapiens.
Others will remind us that just as all of other previous technical revolutions profoundly increased human productivity, welfare and lifespans, AI will make human society better.
Both views will likely prove correct.
Society therefore is rushing into a new era in which rules must be followed even when they cause harm; procedures override common sense; responsibilities become untraceable because everyone is consigned to follow the same process; and intelligence no longer equates with understanding or wisdom.
Perhaps the greatest danger here is that mechanistic left-brain dominant/AI thinking robs us of experiencing what it means to be fully human.
As British-born neurologist and science writer Oliver Sacks instructed in a 2012 New Yorker magazine article:
“To live on a day-to-day basis is insufficient for human beings; we need meaning, understanding, and explanation; we need to see overall patterns in our lives; we need hope, the sense of a future; and we need freedom (or, at least the illusion of freedom) to get beyond ourselves, whether with telescopes and microscopes and our ever-burgeoning technology, or states of mind that allow us to travel to other worlds, to rise above our immediate surroundings.”
Nevertheless, as noted by New York Times writer Carl Zimmer:
“No matter how lateralized the brain can get, the two sides still work together.”
Zimmer points out that “The pop notion of a [dominant] left brain and a right brain doesn’t capture their intimate working relationship.”
For example, whereas the left hemisphere specializes in picking out the sounds that form words and working out the syntax of the phrase, it doesn’t have a monopoly on language processing because the right hemisphere is more sensitive to the emotional features of language, tuning-in to the slow rhythms of speech that carry intonation and stress.
As Dr. Seuss instructs us:
“Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try.”
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