AIming a Little Higher

I love Devi Sridhar. Yes, I fancy her but that is BESIDE THE POINT. Her recent book How Not to Die looks like self-help at first, but is in fact a brilliant call for radical change in public health (and for an expansion of what that means).

It’s not entirely our fault, as individuals, that we’re unhealthy or suffer a low quality of life. It’s that public policy currently nudges us away from making the obvious healthy choices when it should do the opposite. And we shouldn’t be at risk of random agonising deaths from, say, cars and guns, when such things could be spirited out of our lives if only the political will could be summoned to do so.

Lucky for me, Devi writes quite regularly in the Guardian, meaning I get little top-ups of her writing. This week she speaks of AI and what it might be doing to our brains and the world.

AI bores me as a topic, but it might be of interest to Escapologists dreaming of a low-work future for all and who might advocate (or not) for the automation of everything.

[we’re] moving closer to a world where we don’t have to see anyone, move anywhere or use our brains, seemingly at all. And [that’s] wonderful for the tech companies and those looking to cut costs by replacing humans with automation, but certainly not for the rest of us.

I agree, but only inasmuch as there’s no collectively arrived-at vision for a world after work. We may well be sliding into a future where we sit around with phones and laptops like the people in WALL-E. But in those circumstances, at least putting down those devices and doing some something would be a choice instead of something we’re economically bullied into. We shouldn’t have to “do” when we don’t want to. People should decide to get off their arse, not be cattle-prodded into it each morning by a job they despise. We just need to find the imagination to see beyond the world of work.

As an academic, Devi is worried specifically about “generative” AI and how it’s currently used:

As we look to the future, will thinking, reading, writing and actively using our brains become activities from a bygone era? If we stop using our brains to think, socially interact, concentrate or problem-solve, what will be the impact on our quality of life and our chances of ageing healthily? Will we see a rise in chronic disease linked to the brain?

And, maybe just as importantly, does anyone even care? It’s certainly not the concern of tech companies, which are in an arms race to go faster. And so we’re heading in that direction and being told it’s all wonderful. Yes, it is wonderful for certain tech companies. And probably terrible for the mental health and wellbeing of the rest of us.

We do seem to be automating the wrong things: students using AI to write essays when the whole point is to use the brain, publishers using AI to write books when the whole point of books is human connection and to send human thought into the future.

At the same time, I quite like the idea of putting the whole economy on automate. You could have bots buying from other bots in service of GDP (if people insist on that mattering) while we get on with things that matter, no longer motivated by money. The economy could be forced into a data centre where we don’t have to think about it anymore. We do something else instead, even if it just comes down to lazing about and exploring our inner realms.

What it comes down to is: I don’t want work and money to be the motivators for how we live. I don’t want artists to be forced to work primarily so that they can escape destitution. Instead, we can all make art for its own sake and as a means of connecting to each other. Can’t we? We need to find the imagination of what to do after AI, what to automate, and what to reclaim for ourselves. That should be the new system of public policy nudges we should be looking for.

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Connect with real human thought by reading New Escapologist Issue 19 and/or by anonymously mocking your useless workplace in our Workplace Woes section.