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No college campus is complete without a fierce rivalry between STEM and humanities students — and it’s fair to say the scientists have long been winning the competition. Artists and thinkers may have dominated during the Renaissance, but the Industrial Revolution was the age of the tech worker. Apple’s market cap is greater than 96% of global economies and digitally transformed enterprises are now almost half of global GDP.
But as technology hits more milestones and reaches a certain critical mass, I think the humanities are about to make a long-awaited comeback. Technological innovation – especially artificial intelligence – is crying out for critical questions about human nature. Let’s take a look at some of the biggest debates and how disciplines like philosophy, history, law, and politics can help us answer them.
Related: Here’s What You Need to Know About the Menacing Power of AI
The Rise of Conscious AI
The potentially ominous or destructive consequences of artificial intelligence have been the subject of countless books, movies and TV shows. For a while, that may have seemed like nothing more than terrifying speculation — but as technology advances, ethical debates are starting to seem more relevant.
As AI becomes able to replace an increasing number of professions and many people become unemployed, it raises all kinds of moral dilemmas. Is it the government’s role to provide a universal basic income and completely restructure our society, or do we let people fend for themselves and call it survival of the fittest?
Then there’s the question of how ethical it is to use AI to improve human performance and prevent human failure in the first place. Where do we draw the line between a ‘human being’ and a ‘machine’? And if the lines blur, do robots need the same rights as humans? The decisions we make will ultimately determine the future of humanity and can make us stronger or weaker (or disable us completely).
People or machines?
One of the AI advances that raise eyebrows is Google’s Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA). The system was first introduced as a way to connect various Google services together, but ended in a high-profile debate over whether the LaMDA was indeed aware — as Google engineer Blake Lemoine claimed after seeing how realistic the conversations were.
Ultimately, the general consensus was that Lemoine’s arguments were nonsensical. The LaMDA only used predictive statistical techniques to conduct a conversation – just because the algorithms are sophisticated enough to seemingly have a dialogue, it doesn’t mean the LaMDA is aware. However, it does raise an important question about where things would stand if a theoretical AI system could do everything a human can do, including original thoughts and feelings. Would it deserve the same rights that humans have?
Related: What Are Some of the Ethical Concerns of Artificial Intelligence?
The Turing test
The debate about what exactly we should see as human beings is nothing new. In 1950, Alan Turing made the Turing test to determine whether a machine can be sufficiently intelligent and similar enough to humans that we can say that machines have a certain level of ‘consciousness’.
However, not everyone agrees. The philosopher John Searle devised a thought experiment called “Searle’s Chinese Room”, which states that the program of a machine that speaks only in Chinese can be given in the form of cards to a person who does not speak Chinese. That person could then follow the instructions on the cards to fool someone outside the room into thinking they could speak Chinese if they communicated through a slot in the door; but it is clear that this is not the case.
According to Lemoine, Google isn’t willing to run a Turing test on the LaMDA, so it seems Searle isn’t alone with his concerns. But who is going to solve these problems?
An area for the humanities
As more of our lives are enriched by AI, more of these questions will arise. 80,000 Hours, a non-profit run by Oxford academics that focuses on how individuals can make the biggest impact in their careers, has marked positively shaping the development of artificial intelligence as one of the most prominent issues facing the world today.
And while some of the work will likely focus on researching technical solutions for programming AI in ways that work for humans, policy and ethical research will also play a big role. We need people who can engage in debates such as what tasks humans are fundamental to perform and which should be replaced by machines, or how humans and machines can work together as human-machine teams (HMTs).
Then there are all the legal and political implications of a society full of AI. For example, if an AI engine running an autonomous car makes a mistake, who is responsible? There are cases to argue for the fault with the company that designed the model, the human the model learned to drive from, or the AI itself.
Questions like the latter require lawyers and policymakers to analyze the problems and advise governments on how to respond. Their efforts would also be complemented by historians and philosophers who can look back and see where we fell short, what kept us going as a human race, and how AI could fit into this. Anthropologists will also have a lot to offer based on their studies of human societies and civilizations over time.
Related: Why AI and humans are stronger together than apart
An exponential increase in AI requires a revitalization of the humanities
The rise of AI may be happening faster than anyone could have anticipated. Law of Metcalfe says that every additional person added to a network doubles that network’s potential value — meaning a network becomes exponentially more powerful with every addition. We’ve seen this happen with the spread of social networks, but the law is a potentially terrifying prospect when we talk about the rapid rise of AI. And to understand the issues outlined in this article, we need thinkers from all disciplines. Even so, the number of students who graduated humanities in the US in 2020 reduced by 25% since 2012.
As AI becomes an increasingly important part of our daily lives and technology advances, no one in their right mind will deny that we need brilliant algorithm developers, AI researchers and engineers. But we also need philosophers, policymakers, anthropologists and other thinkers to guide AI, set limits and help in situations of human failure. This requires people with a deep understanding of the world.
At a time when humanities are largely seen as “pointless degrees” and young people are discouraged from studying them, I would argue that there is a unique opportunity to revive them as disciplines more relevant than ever – but this requires collaboration between technical and non-technical disciplines that are complex to build. Either way, these positions will inevitably be performed, but how well will depend on our ability to prepare future professionals in these fields who have both multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary views of the humanities.
