The Most Important Use of AI: Deepening Our Humanity

Photo: zhuyufang / Getty Images

The Age of AI — which has been imminently imminent for decades — has finally arrived. From jobs and art to education, PowerPoint presentations and even dad jokes, the ways in which AI is going to impact our world are endless. But in the growing debate around AI, there’s one possibility that’s not getting a lot of oxygen: the very big question of how we can use AI not just to perform things for humans, but connect more fully with what it means to be human. AI is ultimately a tool, and its impact will depend on how humanity uses it. The more we can use this moment to bring together a critical mass of people working in good faith and with empathy, the more likely it is that humanity will use AI to flourish.

Periods of disruption and transition offer unique opportunities for insight and wisdom. These periods of disruption involve stripping away what is non-essential and reaffirming what is essential. That’s what’s happening now. And that’s why I’m optimistic this moment will be a time of transformation and renewal. By taking off our plate many of the mundane tasks that have consumed our time and attention for years, or decades, or millennia, it’s possible that our essential humanity will be put into starker relief. With much of the noise taken away by AI, the signal will be more clear.

Discovering Our Full Humanity

As part of Apollo 8, William Anders was one of the first three humans to orbit the moon — and that meant he was also one of the first humans to witness an “earthrise.” As he described it, “We came all this way to explore the moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth.” The same process could be happening now: as we’re expending enormous effort to make machines mimic humans, what we may well discover is what makes us uniquely human. The metric of how closely we get machines to mimic humans is called the Turing test, or as Alan Turing called it in 1950, the “imitation game.” But in fact, we might be the ones failing the Turing test, by defining what it means to be human so narrowly, without encompassing the timeless, and our need to connect with something larger than ourselves.

We’re Hardwired to Connect

In The Awakened Brain, Dr. Lisa Miller shows that we have “a natural inclination toward and docking station for spiritual awareness.” But, as she points out, “we have to choose to engage it. It’s a muscle we can learn to strengthen, or let atrophy.” In AI, a primary flashpoint is the so-called “alignment problem”: the challenge of encoding AI so that it aligns with human values and doesn’t cause harm. But as we tackle the alignment problem in AI, can we use AI to deepen and expand what we consider human values?

Onward, Upward, Inward

How might this work? We know that AI is quickly getting more and more sophisticated at diagnosing and giving us real-time information about our physical health. So if we widen the possibilities to encompass all aspects of our well-being, including our spiritual well-being, AI could be a Sherpa on our journey toward greater health and resilience: nudges on food, sleep, movement, stress and connection, but also personalized recommendations on sacred texts, poetry and quotes that help us reset and connect with that deeper place of peace, wisdom and strength we all have inside us. We know AI can do data, so why not use it for wisdom, too? As Reid Hoffman, who has been a central figure in the development of AI, told The New York Times, a goal of AI should be “elevating humanity.” Part of that, Hoffman said, is using AI to improve our lives by “giving everyone a medical assistant” and “giving everyone a tutor.” And it could give everyone a spiritual guide, too!

The Point of Our Journey

Whether or not we believe in God, or a higher power, or a benevolent universe, we’re all more likely to thrive when we disconnect from the world and answer our need to connect with something larger than ourselves. That’s a fundamental part of being human. And AI can be a tool to augment and deepen that aspect of our humanity. “We can make these new things and we can journey with them,” Hoffman said. And if we choose to, we can make that journey a more human experience. As Joseph Campbell put it, describing the hero’s journey — the one we’re all on: “Where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence.”

Read More on Thrive: The Most Important Use of AI: Deepening Our Humanity

Moment(s) of Wonder

Speaking of the benefits of aligning our outer and inner worlds, last week “Manhattanhenge” opened to rapturous reviews on Broadway (and the whole borough). On two days every May and again in July, Manhattan’s street grid aligns perfectly with the setting sun — a New York City revival of Stonehenge. It’s a magical moment when New Yorkers look up from their phones, and their to-do lists, to experience a shared moment of wonder.

Photo: Gary Hershorn / Getty Images

And proving that New York isn’t the only city that can align the worldly and the heavenly, here is an image captured recently by photographer Stefano Zanarello in the City of Light:

Photo: Stefano Zanarello / Instagram

My Chance to Agree With Elon Musk

I’ve written critically in the past about Elon Musk’s sleep-deprived leadership style, but I was struck by this notable bit in an interview he did with CNBC. Asked about how much sleep he gets, Musk said he now gets six hours, and adds, “I’ve tried [to sleep] less, but... even though I’m awake more hours, I get less done. And the brain pain level is bad if I get less than six hours.” This is huge progress! Thank you Elon for acknowledging this scientific truth. Now onward to Mars!

Book of the Month

Cover: Penguin Press

For years, Bruce Feiler has been writing and speaking about how we find meaning in our lives and nurture our spiritual selves, and he’s done it once again with a fantastic new book, The Search: Finding Meaningful Work in a Post-Career World. His 2020 book, Life Is in the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age, was about how periods of disruption and transition, which Feiler calls “lifequakes,” give us unique opportunities for insight. For that book, Feiler traveled the country collecting people’s stories for his Life Story Project. For The Search, he did the same, collecting people’s narratives about their jobs. What he learned became a guidebook to help people make the most of what he calls “workquakes.”

The Change In How We Think About Work

Certainly, it couldn’t come at a better moment. As Feiler notes, we’re in a time of profound transition in how we think about the place of work in our lives: “Fewer people search merely for work these days. More people search for work with meaning.” The result is that “we’re moving from a means-based economy to a meaning-based economy.” And The Search is a playbook for how to make the most of this transition. Feiler knows the importance of stories to our lives. Stories are how we experience the world and how we know who we are. And the problem, he writes, is that many of us are operating according to someone else’s narrative — about work, success and our own lives. So we need to “take control of our own work narrative,” and along with it, our own definition of success.

Writing Your Own Story

Echoing the Delphic admonition to “know thyself,” Feiler writes that “the biggest impediment to a meaningful life is not what you know about work; it’s what you know about yourself.” And The Search can help you answer these questions. It is, as Feiler describes it, “a tool kit for discovering your own work story” and “a roadmap to authoring your own life.” Even if you’re not experiencing a workquake, The Search is invaluable for anybody who wants to find meaning in their lives and in their work. Which is to say, for everybody (including, given the season, any new college graduates in your life).

Study of the Month

Determining the right age to get children their first phones isn’t easy. But for those parents trying to make the case to their child to wait a bit, a new report from Sapien Labs gives them some leverage. The study found that “mental well-being consistently improved with older age of first ownership of a smartphone or tablet.” And it comes just after Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy's advisory on the impact of social media on the mental health of adolescents. “The most common question parents ask me is, ‘is social media safe for my kids?’ The answer is that we don't have enough evidence to say it's safe, and in fact, there is growing evidence that social media use is associated with harm to young people’s mental health,” Dr. Murthy said. 

Doc of the Month

Photo: Apple TV+

Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie, the moving and inspiring new documentary by Davis Guggenheim streaming on Apple TV+. We might know the outlines of the story — how the beloved, multiple Emmy-winning star Michael J. Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease at 29 and has been living with the disease ever since — but seeing him in his daily life and hearing his hard-won wisdom in his own words is a lesson in resilience. What also comes through in the film, shot over the course of a year, is Fox’s authenticity. As Guggenheim put it, “It’s a testament to him — he just presents as he presents… He never stopped and said, ‘Let me say that again.’ He never said, ‘Can you please portray me a certain way?’ He just barreled through. What he signaled to me was: As long as I’m communicating what I communicate, I don’t really care.” And what he’s communicating is worth hearing. Fox has lost much to the disease — but not his humor, his optimism and his sense of gratitude. “I wanted that thing he had found,” says Guggenheim on why he made the film. And what Fox has found is powerful indeed. As he concludes, “You’re only as sick as your secrets.”

Best,