From Selfies to Superpowers
You aren’t obsolete, you’re just not superhuman enough, yet. Welcome to your A.I. to transhuman evolutionary primer.
Around this time last year, I was cycling my way through the city of Berlin in search of a particular bookstore hidden in the coffee shop-lined maze of the Prenzlauer Berg district. Unlike many cities in North America and Asia, most of Berlin’s face masks had already been discarded. Massive crowds of beering, shopping, and commuting residents mingled unencumbered by PPE accouterments as the city bloomed into post-pandemic mode.
At one point, I slowed my bright orange Donkey Republic electric bike to take it all in. While stopped at a corner, I asked a friendly-looking person, who appeared to be a local (All black clothing? Check. Face fixed into an unflappable mien of rigid logic and real-time analysis? Check.) for directions. The person, in clear and unaccented English, replied, “Well, uhm, sure… but… you don’t have Google Maps?”
He was right. In a moment of flâneurial bliss, I had momentarily forgotten my own near-constant proselytizing about the state of the human race in major cities, namely, that we have already begun our journey to transhuman existence through technological augmentation. I quickly pulled out my human augmentation device and Google Mapped myself the rest of the way to my destination.
The Art of Becoming Extraordinary
“The human species can, if it wishes, transcend itself—not just sporadically, an individual here in one way, an individual there in another way, but in its entirety, as humanity,” wrote British biologist Huxley in his 1957 essay “Transhumanism." “We need a name for this new belief. Perhaps transhumanism will serve: man remaining man, but transcending himself, by realizing new possibilities of and for his human nature.”
In subsequent decades, the concept has been adopted by futurists as an umbrella term for examining the potential for humans to guide their own evolution by enhancing their physical and mental capabilities through the use of science and technology. From advanced prosthetics to replace legs and arms, to the pharmaceutical cocktails some use to enhance their cognition, the idea of augmenting ourselves is generally considered a natural progression
But that progression must be handled delicately, lest the public becomes alarmed, as it did upon the arrival of Google Glass in 2012. The wearable augmented reality device immediately made its wearers look like a member of Star Trek’s Borg collective, despite Sergey Brin’s efforts to aesthetically defang the scary face-computer by pairing it with fashion’s elite.
When it comes to innovation, the how can be just as important as the why.
The A.I. Fear Factor
The sleepless nights, mildly clenched jaws, and unconscious hand-wringing now being experienced by many due to the disruptive potential of artificial intelligence (A.I.) is something I’ve, thankfully, already cycled through. Well over a year ago, the existential dread of A.I. possibly taking nearly every human job, and with it, any sense of meaning for many humans, washed over me like a dreary cloud bank of reality.
That is until I remembered a topic I’ve been obsessed with for many years: transhumanism. What if, instead of viewing A.I. as an external threat to our existence, we instead framed it as just another one of the many tools we’ve harnessed over centuries?
This is the question I saw being tossed around by the most optimistic traditional artists in early 2022 as they conducted open panels on forums and on YouTube as to how they might continue to thrive as generative A.I. gave nearly anyone the ability to produce polished illustrations without a lick of artistic skill. Back then—the ancient times of 11 months ago—the optimists talked of using generative A.I. to enhance their art and production frequency. “Besides, A.I. still can’t do hands.”
The Paradox of Perfection
Positive thinking, especially when one’s livelihood is under threat, can be productive. Unfortunately, some of these optimistic artists were incorrectly thinking of A.I. as either a static property or perhaps as slowly developing as, say, Photoshop. That, as we now know, is not the case. Today, Midjourney version 5 now renders generally acceptable hands and even more sophisticated illustrations.
Simply adding one’s own unique touch to generative A.I. outputs can work, especially for those not particularly talented in a certain field of endeavor. But for those with deep experience in a particular field, this may not be the optimal way to think about how to make A.I. work for you. Similarly, ChatGPT 4 can craft a convincing business plan, poem, and fictional story, all in the style of writer the user chooses.
But the seams of these tools begin to make themselves apparent when the user asks the A.I. to tackle something they, as a human, is an expert in. The facts often line up (unless the A.I. is “hallucinating”), and the structure is relatively sound, but the nuance that the human expert has worked a lifetime to understand and interpret is usually missing for anything but the most general prompt tasks.
This, too, will change, especially when artificial general intelligence (AGI) arrives (or, perhaps, sooner via tools like AutoGPT). But in the interim, if you are an expert in your field, A.I. is the quickest and most powerful path to becoming truly transhuman sans implants and socially awkward wearable contraptions. The key is to rethink how A.I. can be used to do your work.
There’s no need to toss away many years of experience in a particular field in favor of just letting A.I. deliver a rough approximation of what a human expert’s discernment and perspective might deliver. Instead, using A.I. to help the expert think deeper, iterate faster, and test and fail in more interesting ways before delivering a final product is the superpower A.I. can provide.
Optimistically Opting into Orthogonal Optimization
“You are the eventuality of an anomaly which, despite my sincerest efforts, I have been unable to eliminate from what is otherwise a harmony of mathematical precision. While it remains a burden assiduously avoided, it is not unexpected and thus not beyond a measure of control. Which has led you, inexorably, here.”
An A.I. known as The Architect explains a human’s role in the Matrix in The Matrix Reloaded
I began by talking about my time touching grass concrete in Berlin. This is just one rudimentary way a human writer can easily do something that an A.I. cannot. Increasingly, the questions around A.I. that don’t center around the technology itself will be devoted to discovering how humans can be more and do more while also enhancing their existing abilities through the use of A.I.
Sure, an A.I. can lie to readers and tell a similar travel tale, and maybe even add faked generative videos and photos to support its simulacra. But in our modern 2023 society, humans still appreciate the rough texture of reality. We still like to know that we’re interacting with an actual person who has lived a life of ups and downs and tangible human experiences that we can directly relate to. This dynamic is not static, either. But it is where we are today. As the pandemic taught us, the isolation of virtual meetings and remote work is viable for many situations, but in the end, nothing beats sitting down and having a drink, face to face, with another human being and getting to know them. Not their Twitter feed, or their Instagram page, but the real them.
And while we can’t always meet in meatspace, the idea that we’re engaging with another real person, including all the minor and major battle scars, charms, and inadequacies they come with, is something humanity is still addicted to. As efficient as we’re all collectively striving to be, we are still ruled by the anomalous agent known as human emotion. For now, this continues to connect us to the rest of humanity. Moving forward, one’s value as a human expert will be to accentuate and harness the flawed anomaly that is You. Keeping the rough edges, while simultaneously optimizing your abilities and output.
The lazy A.I. users will actualize the oft-mentioned A.I. nightmare and become slaves to the algorithm. The rest of us may come to merge with A.I. and become superhumans. These transhumans, seasoned with the flaws of the flesh, may cause even AGI to marvel at humanity when it wakes up and considers the universe it is born into.