You don’t have to ski just because there are wonderful snow slopes in Switzerland. It isn’t necessary to visit Vienna to listen to brilliant performances of Mozart’s music. Most of life is optional, there if you want it, not if you don’t. AI is in a different category. Skiing and music can enhance life. AI can replace it. AI is not just ”available”. It is invasive. Whether you pay attention to it or not, it is paying attention to you. You must decide if that’s good or bad.
It’s not a one-off decision, it’s one you will make every day for the rest of your life. You will make it positively by knowing enough about it to have a view of its relevance to you. Or you will make it by default – lack of attention will allow AI to make the decision for you. That doesn’t mean that we must totally understand, use and critique AI. Our life is our own and we can do with it what we will within the law. AI will still dominate our thinking and behaviour.
What is the best way to handle it? My opinion is that we should try to keep abreast of what AI can and cannot do in the broadest sense. Not the techie stuff but the relationship AI is creating towards humans. I have just been doing an experiment to see to what extent AI can become a ‘friend’. It’s a ridiculous idea, of course. How can something that cannot think in exactly the way you and I do become a friend? Well, look around. It’s happening all the time. ESN people are usually kind, lovable, beautiful. High thinkers can be stinkers.
We don’t all want the same kind of friends. Some want friends to compete with, some to talk to, some to love, some to learn. AI can not only supply these friends, it can suggest how you might expand your abilities by having a few different friends from the ones you already know and love. You choose your own friends. AI is an opportunity for you to choose friends who could develop your intellect, your skills, your enjoyment of life.
Don’t want to know any of that? It’s your choice. But just think about this.
There is a kind of parallel between AI and the Climate. People who deny mankind’s influence on today’s changing climate say it is part of a long-term inevitable cycle and that in 100,000 years time we will be in the middle of another ice age. This allows them to ignore what is happening now. Personally, I find that being fried, blown to bits or drowned is no more agreeable because it is a part of history than because it is the result of the current appalling treatment of our world.
AI’s future role in human development is inevitable. To ignore it will make us at least partly responsible for what happens next.
I’d rather feel that I at least understood it. Wouldn’t you?
Good morning
John Bittleston
How are your experiments with Alternative Intelligence friends?
Please tell us at [email protected].
10 June 2025
