The End of Purpose: How AI Is Making Us Rethink What It Means to Be Human #47 #cong22

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1. The idea that we need to have a purpose is relatively recent
2. The view that our worth as human beings is somehow tied up in what we do is a product of the Enlightenment
3. AI is making us rethink what it means to be human
4. AI is not making us obsolete, it is making us rethink our purpose

Stephen Howell is a geek dad of 4 neurodiverse kids. He is an advocate for ADHD and ASD awareness. Career wise, he is public speaker on cloud technologies. He has worked for companies like IBM, DCU, TU Dublin, and Microsoft. He is currently working on his PhD thesis on Inclusive Design & Creative Technology Innovation.

By Stephen Howell

I sat the Leaving Certificate in 1994, and while I had a career guidance councillor in the school, I don’t recall ever discussing, or thinking about the future in terms of purpose. Instead, we focused not on what course at university we might enjoy but what course would lead to a profession with jobs. As a child of the 80’s, future employment prospects were paramount. Woe betide the student who studied something just because they were good at it, or thought they might like it.

I have never been a planner, or someone who envisioned a particular future. I was good at coding, albeit self-taught, and I set up a computer club, so it was not unreasonable that I would study computer science. I did not think coding or a career in tech was my purpose. I took a parttime job teaching coding to first year students in Ballymun Comprehensive. I did not think teaching was my purpose. I just went along with whatever opportunity presented itself.

Coding and teaching ended up being all I’ve really done professionally since 1994. I graduated in 1998, went into a series of coding jobs. Then I started lecturing on coding, part time at first and eventually fulltime, and at no point did I think ‘this is my purpose, I am meant to code, or teach, and ideally teach coding’.

I just did what I enjoyed, and what I was good at. If there was a steady stream of interesting work, I would do it. I never worried that I would never find my purpose, or that my lack of purpose would somehow make me less human.

In recent years, AI has been increasingly presented as a threatening technology, with doomsayers talking about how it will destroy jobs, and make us obsolete. One of the key ways in which AI is said to be making us obsolete is by taking away our purpose. Once machines can do everything we can do, and do it better, faster and cheaper, what will be left for us to do? What will be our purpose?

The funny thing is, I’ve never worried about AI taking away my purpose. I don’t think of coding, or teaching, as my purpose. They are just things I enjoy doing, and am good at. If AI can do those things better than me, then so be it. I’ll find something else to do.

The idea that we need to have a purpose, that our worth as human beings is somehow tied up in what we do, is a relatively recent phenomenon. It is only in the last few hundred years that we have started to think of ourselves as beings with a specific purpose.

The ancient Greeks did not think of themselves as having a purpose. They thought of themselves as part of a larger whole, of being a small piece in the puzzle of the cosmos. The medieval Christians did not think of themselves as having a purpose. They thought of themselves as part of God’s plan, which might be unknowable to them. It was only with the rise of the Enlightenment, and the individualism that came with it, that the idea of the individual with a specific purpose began to take hold.

The Enlightenment view of the world was that it was knowable, and that humans could understand it if they used their reason. This view led to the belief that humans could, and should, control their own destiny. If the world was knowable, and if humans could understand it, then surely they could find a way to make it better.

This view of the world led to the belief that humans should have a specific purpose. We should not just drift through life, going with the flow, but should have a plan, a goal, a reason for being.

This view of the world has led to a lot of good. It has led to the development of science, and the belief that we can understand and control the world we live in. It has led to the belief that we can make the world a better place.

But it has also led to a lot of bad. It has led to the belief that those who do not have a specific purpose are somehow inferior, that they are not fully human. It has led to the belief that our worth as human beings is somehow tied up in what we do.

AI is making us rethink what it means to be human. It is making us rethink our purpose. AI is not making us obsolete. It is making us rethink what it means to be human.