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Artificial Intelligence
Worried About AI? Worry More About Human Robot-Envy
How to enjoy safe stress reduction while grounded in the human condition.
Posted June 27, 2023 Reviewed by Hara Estroff Marano
Key points
- To feel comfortable in our own skins we seek reliable ways to regenerate our confidence.
- Some of the most reliable are dangerous because they are ungrounded, as if we were perfect robots.
- AI tempts us to assume falsely that minds are bots and that bots think.
- Celebrate your stress-reduction hobbies as "safe escapism" important for staying human.
Inanimate objects exist because they’re durable. You’re not one. Nor is any living being. Durable objects degenerate slowly. Living beings are fragile, so we have to work to protect ourselves against degeneration and regenerate what degenerates.
“Being” is a great term for what you are. A verb and a noun. You’re busy being a being. Remaining a being takes effort, effort that durable objects can’t and don’t make.
Like today. Even if you just vegged out on the couch, congratulations! You still managed to be productive. You generated 330 billion cells to replace the fragile cells that died today.
You do this body-regeneration hustle unconsciously, without thinking about it or feeling it. Your body’s adaptive habits of self-regenerating are churning away below your radar. We hardly notice our bodies churning away like this. Even scientists and philosophers often talk as if your body is a durable machine that houses your thoughts and emotions.
With our bodies regenerating on automatic like that, our emotions become our priority. Your skin regenerates itself without us thinking about it. But feeling comfortable and confident in our own skins? That consumes our attention.
We’re all fighting emotional gravity. We’ve got our reassuring friends, our social media, the treats we buy ourselves, the hours we spend watching videos, identifying with heroes, and little mojo-replenishing pit stops to keep us feeling comfortable if not proud in our own skins.
Sometimes we act as if it’s OK that we’re doing all this confidence-regeneration work. We shop-talk the cool new stress-reduction practices to combat burnout. We’re not ashamed of our restorative mindfulness meditation, rejuvenating vacations, and recreational activities, literally, re-creating or regenerating our mojo.
And then sometimes we act like we’re just durable objects, maintenance-free machines, tough, able to withstand anything. We accuse people of getting upset as though it’s a rare and discrediting illness. We sneer at people’s self-indulgent selfies as though confidence replenishment is only for deficient souls. I call it robo-envy, wishing we were more like robots.
These days, everyone’s talking about whether artificial intelligence is gaining consciousness. Those who argue that it isn't say AI has no thoughts or emotions and therefore is not grounded in reality.
I’d say it’s more fundamental than that. AI doesn’t even do body maintenance. It has no skin in its own game and doesn’t have to fend for itself. It's not struggling for its own existence the way we beings do. It’s just switch positions on durable machines. We feed AI switch positions that mean something to us. It’s a machine that turns switch-position inputs into switch-position outputs that we then interpret. AI does no more interpretation than does a coin flip.
To regenerate ourselves we have to stay grounded, interpreting reality. Even your skin’s regeneration is grounded in local reality—for example, responding to real-world changes in the weather.
But here’s the thing: When we’re sad, angry, disappointed, or otherwise feeling like we’re sinking emotionally, we tend to get ungrounded—not just unstable but losing touch with reality, mostly through a change in how we use words.
Words can be grounded in reality but it’s optional. We can use them to describe reality, but we can also just use them like animal sounds. When you stub your toe or someone angers you, you might blurt a swear word to ease the pain. The word "shit" can mean poop, but if you call someone a shit, you don’t even have to think about its real meaning. It’s the feeling of the word that matters. All you need to know is that it’s bad.
When we're feeling stressed, we tend to get robotic, ungrounded, lurching automatically to blurt whatever familiar phrases make us feel comfortable in our own skin again. We’ll say anything to feel innocent, spouting whatever word-sounds make the stinging, sinking feeling go away: Uplifting words about ourselves and put-down words for whoever we feel is attacking us: “No, you jerk, I’m honest, kind, reasonable.” We don't have to think about what the words mean any more than does AI. Words can become like involuntary animal sounds.
Such word-blurting is a dangerously ungrounding kind of stress reduction. I’ll call it getting chimperious, monkey dominance expressed in imperious words.
I worry about AI-bots but I worry more about people getting robotic, their loaded words getting more and more ungrounded from reality. Reality only tolerates so much chimperiousness. To survive, we have to stay grounded in reality.
Stay human and respect your 24/7 stress-reducing, confidence-regenerating hustle, your emotional equivalent of regenerating your daily 330 billion cells. And congratulate yourself for doing it in healthy ways. When you get a mood boost off exercising, posting selfies, or fantasizing about being as heroic as fictional characters, without forgetting that it’s fantasy, you’re doing a little something good for the world. You’re getting the mojo boosts all humans need without joining some robotic ungrounded chimperious cult.
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