Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humans

While these experts expect AI to augment humans in many positive ways, some are concerned that a deepening dependence upon machine-intelligence networks will diminish crucial human capabilities. Some maintain there has already been an erosion of people's abilities to think for themselves, to take action independent of automated systems and to interact effectively face-to-face with others.

Charles Ess, an expert in ethics and professor with the department of media and communication at the University of Oslo, said, "It seems quite clear that evolving AI systems will bring about an extraordinary array of options, making our lives more convenient. But convenience almost always comes at the cost of deskilling – of our offloading various cognitive practices and virtues to the machines and thereby our becoming less and less capable of exercising our own agency, autonomy and most especially our judgment (phronesis). In particular, empathy and loving itself are virtues that are difficult to acquire and enhance. My worst fears are not only severe degradation, perhaps more or less loss of such capacities – and, worst of all, our forgetting they even existed in the first place, along with the worlds they have made possible for us over most of our evolutionary and social history".

Daniel Siewiorek, a professor with the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, predicted, "The downside: isolating people, decreasing diversity, a loss of situational awareness (witness GPS directional systems) and 'losing the receipt' of how to do things. In the latter case, as we layer new capabilities on older technologies if we forget how the older technology works we cannot fix it and layered systems may collapse, thrusting us back into a more-primitive time".

Marilyn Cade, longtime global internet policy consultant, responded, "Technology often reflects the ethics of its creators, but more significantly, those who commercialize it. Most individuals focus on how they personally use technology. They do not spend time (or even have the skills/expertise) to make judgments about the attributes of the way that technology is applied. … We must introduce and maintain a focus on critical thinking for our children/youth, so that they are capable of understanding the implications of a different fully digitized world. I love the fact that my typos are autocorrected, but I know how to spell all the words. I know how to construct a logical argument. If we don't teach critical thinking at all points in education, we will have a 2030 world where the elites/scientists make decisions that are not even apparent to the average 'person' on the street/neighborhood".

Garland McCoy, founder and chief development officer of the Technology Education Institute, wrote, "I am an optimist at heart and so believe that, given a decade-plus, the horror that is unfolding before our eyes will somehow be understood and resolved. That said, if the suicide epidemic we are witnessing continues to build and women continue to opt out of motherhood all bets are off. I do think technology is at the core of both the pathology and choice".

Aneesh Aneesh, professor at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, said, "Socially, AI systems will automate tasks that currently require human negotiation and interaction. Unless people feel the pressure, institutionally or otherwise, to interact with each other, they – more often than not – choose not to interact. The lack of physical, embodied interaction is almost guaranteed to result in social loneliness and anomie, and associated problems such as suicide, a phenomenon already are on the rise in the United States".

Ebenezer Baldwin Bowles, author, editor and journalist, responded, "If one values community and the primacy of face-to-face, eye-to-eye communication, then human-machine/AI collaboration in 2030 will have succeeded in greatly diminishing the visceral, primal aspects of humanity. Every expression of daily life, either civil or professional or familial or personal, will be diminished by the iron grip of AI on the fundamental realities of interpersonal communications. Already the reliance on voice-to-text technology via smartphone interface diminishes the ability of people to write with skill and cogency. Taking the time to ring-up another and chat requires too much psychic energy, so we 'speak' to one another in text box fragments written down and oft altered by digital assistants. The dismissive but socially acceptable 'TL;DR' becomes commonplace as our collective attention span disintegrates. Yes, diagnostic medicine and assembly-line production and expanded educational curriculum will surely be enhanced by cyber-based, one-and-zero technologies, but at what cost to humanity? Is it truly easier and safer to look into a screen and listen to an electronically delivered voice, far away on the other side of an unfathomable digital divide, instead of looking into another's eyes, perhaps into a soul, and speaking kind words to one another, and perhaps singing in unison about the wonders of the universe? We call it 'artificial intelligence' for good reason".

A principal design researcher at one of the world's largest technology companies commented, "Although I have long worked in this area and been an optimist, I now fear that the goal of most AI and UX is geared toward pushing people to interact more with devices and less with other people. As a social species that is built to live in communities, reductions in social interaction will lead to erosion of community and rise in stress and depression over time. Although AI has the potential to improve lives as well, those advances will come more slowly than proponents think, due to the 'complexity brake' Paul Allen wrote about, among other things. There have been AI summers and AI winters. This is not an endless summer".

A chief operating officer wrote, "No doubt in my mind, AI is and will continue to present benefits in simplifying and aiding human activities; however, the net effect is not likely 'to leave people better off'. The advances in AI-enabled tools are likely to expand the digital gap in human competencies. This growing gap will decrease the capacity of sizable portions of the population to survive an outage of the technology. This raises humanitarian and national-security concerns".

Dalsie Green Baniala, CEO and regulator of the Telecommunications and Radiocommunications Regulator of Vanuatu, wrote, "With the introduction of the Internet of Things, human senses are in decline".

Alper Dincel of T.C. Istanbul Kultur University in Turkey, wrote, "Personal connections will continue to drop, as they are in today's world. We are going to have more interest in fiction than in reality. These issues will affect human brain development as a result".

Michael Dyer, an emeritus professor of computer science at the University of California, Los Angeles, commented, "As long as GAI (general AI) is not achieved then specialized AI will eliminate tasks associated with jobs but not the jobs themselves. A trucker does a lot more than merely drive a truck. A bartender does a lot more than merely pour drinks. Society will still have to deal with the effects of smart technologies encroaching ever into new parts of the labor market. A universal basic income could mitigate increasing social instability. Later on, as general AI spreads, it will become an existential threat to humanity. My estimate is that this existential threat will not begin to arise until the second half of the 21st century. Unfortunately, by then humanity might have grown complacent, since specialized AI systems do not pose an existential threat".

Mauro D. Ríos, an adviser to the E-Government Agency of Uruguay and director of the Internet Society's Uruguay chapter, responded, "In 2030 dependence on AI will be greater in all domestic, personal, work and educational contexts; this will make the lives of many people better. However, it has risks. We must be able to maintain active survival capabilities without AI. Human freedom cannot be lost in exchange for the convenience of improving our living standards. … AI must continue to be subject to the rationality and control of the human being".

Nancy Greenwald, a respondent who provided no identifying details, wrote, "Perhaps the primary downside is overreliance on AI, which 1) is only as good as the algorithms created (how are they instructed to 'learn?') and 2) has the danger of limiting independent human thinking. How many Millennials can read a map or navigate without the step-by-step instructions from Waze, Google or their iPhones? And information searches online don't give you an overview. I once wasted 1.5 billable hours searching for a legal concept when two minutes with the human based BNA outline got me the result in two minutes. Let's be thoughtful about how we use the amazing technology".

Valarie Bell, a computational social scientist at the University of North Texas, commented, "As a social scientist I'm concerned that never before have we had more ways in which to communicate and yet we've never done it so poorly, so venomously and so wastefully. With devices replacing increasingly higher-order decisions and behaviors, people have become more detached, more disinterested and yet more self-focused and self-involved".

Lane Jennings, managing editor for the World Future Review from 2009 to 2015, wrote, "It is most likely that advances in AI will improve technology and thus give people new capabilities. But this 'progress' will also make humanity increasingly vulnerable to accidental breakdowns, power failures and deliberate attacks. Example: Driverless cars and trucks and pilotless passenger aircraft will enhance speed and safety when they work properly, but they will leave people helpless if they fail. Fear and uncertainty could negate positive benefits after even a few highly publicized disasters".

Michael Veale, co-author of "Fairness and Accountability Designs Needs for Algorithmic Support in High-Stakes Public Sector Decision-Making" and a technology policy researcher at University College London, responded, "AI technologies will turn out to be more narrowly applicable than some hope. There will be a range of small tasks that will be more effectively automated. Whether these tasks leave individuals with increased ability to find meaning or support in life is debatable. Freed from some aspects of housework and administration, some individuals may feel empowered whereas others might feel aimless. Independent living for the elderly might be technologically mediated, but will it have the social connections and community that makes life worth living? Jobs too will change in nature, but it is not clear that new tasks will make people happy. It is important that all technologies and applications are backed up with social policies and systems to support meaning and connection, or else even effective AI tools might be isolating and even damaging on aggregate".

The following one-liners from anonymous respondents also tie into this theme:

• A British-American computer scientist commented, "Increasing dependence on AI will decrease societal resilience through centralization of essential systems in a few large companies".
• A leading infrastructure engineer for a social network company commented, "AI may make people's lives better by making some things easier, but it will likely reduce human value along the way – I expect people to be less able to make decisions, less able to tolerate human interaction, etc".
• A representative for a nation-state's directorate of telecommunications wrote, "My fear is that humans will become more and more dependent on AI, to the extent that their natural intelligence would be more and more diminished. The concern is that in the absence of AI they may not be able to act in a timely manner".

Other anonymous respondents commented:

• "We need to assure that we have individuals who are able to think and problem-solve and monitor that thinking without assistance".
• "Our ethical capabilities lag far behind our technical capabilities".
• "Increasing dependence on AI will decrease societal resilience through centralization of essential systems in a few large companies".
• "Lack of education in AI and inclusiveness of individual in their own decision-making will make most people worse off in 2030".
• "Few people will understand what the AI is attempting to do and how it's doing it; regular people without this knowledge will become more like sheep".
• "I have concerns about how people are adapting to these new changes, the continuing disconnection people have due to advances in AI, substituting AI connections for real people, leading to greater depression".
• "My fear is that we will spend even more time with machines than we do with talking with each other".
• "My fear is that the increasing 'datafication' of work and our lives as a whole will further increase the pressure we feel to reach an unrealistic apex of perfection".
• "As one is more and more people have AI/automation support in their daily lives the interactions between people will lessen. People may feel more isolated and less socially interrelated. Social interaction must be carefully maintained and evolved".