Modern thought begins in doubt. René Descartes decided to doubt everything, even his own existence, before reaching the bottom line: if doubt is happening, there must be a doubter. So there is something real, that is, the doubter. I think, then I am. Boom! He had found a secure base. And he built on that. He was a mathematical genius who anticipated most of the STEM fields today. Descartes is a symbolic launching point of modern science and technology, a forerunner of the digital age.
Less well known is that Descartes also doubted that people were truly human. Looking out his Amsterdam window at passers-by in their hats and coats, he wondered if they might be intelligently constructed automatons. He lived at the dawn of a mechanical age. The watch and the lenses were cutting edge technologies. Automata could look incredibly alive. The good guys could move, talk, and soon apparently even eat or play chess. The lenses revealed new vistas impossible beyond the reach of the naked eye, the craters of the moon and the tails of beating sperm. Telescopes and microscopes broke the boundaries of vision and knowledge that had shut out all previous mortals.
For four centuries, we have been concerned. What if the machines, with their obviously superior capabilities, took over? How can we defend what is uniquely human from its threat? Are our devices overstepping God-given limits and threatening our humanity? Previous generations worried about Frankenstein, robots and assembly lines; today we care about the AI and big language models that power ChatGPT. It’s a legitimate question. But maybe that’s wrong too.
At least, we often try to answer it in the wrong way. Ridley Scott’s dark 1982 sci-fi film “Blade Runner” portrays a neon-lit Los Angeles in an undefined cyberfuture where renegade “replicants” mingle undetected with the human population. These are artificial humanoids whose engineered identity can only be revealed through complicated tests. Some of them even think they are human. A former cop, Rick Deckard, played by Harrison Ford, is hired to hunt them down and “take them down” (ie, kill them). Throughout, the film drops subtle hints, however, that this bounty hunter might also be a replicant. His name is Deckard – get it? (Discards!) The question raised by the film is not only whether the machines will take over but a deeper one: am I also a machine? What would it take for me to be human?
Artificial intelligence certainly gives cause for concern. The First Industrial Revolution, powered by steam, replaced physical labor, to some extent, with machines. Goodbye shovel and scythe, hello backhoe and combine. The Second Industrial Revolution, driven by electricity, replaced mental work, to some extent, with automation. Goodbye telephone operator and reference librarian, hello automated switchboard and Google. Technological change has never been smooth: workers always have strong opinions when they are fired. The recent Hollywood writers’ strike, for example, is partly about ensuring a place for human talent when computer-generated scripts (and potential actors, too) are cheap and easy.
But we ask the deeper question: Does AI threaten what it means to be human? The annals of thought are full of fallen defenses of what is uniquely human. Reasoning? Back and forth conversation? Empathy? They have all faltered. Ironically, we are often asked online if we are human. We have to select cyclists, fire hydrants or crosswalks from a series of photos and then check a box that says “I’m not a robot”. These CAPTCHA tests prevent spam and bots while extracting valuable data for self-driving car developers. Declare that you are not a robot is an open sesame online!
But being human is much more difficult than checking a box. Descartes looked out of his window at the crowds passing by and wondered if they were human beings. We look at each other’s screens and sometimes we can have the same thought. We appear as avatars or “profiles”, a word that used to be mostly used for criminals. Online we are all “replicants”, indistinguishable between android and human. In cyberspace, we are creatures of pixel and type. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the online world breeds so many bounty hunters to kill.
Will humans be replaced? This question assumes too much: that we are already human. A quick survey of online behavior will suggest: Maybe not. Humanity is not what we have; it’s what we need. A frequent test of our humanity would show us to be mechanical and lacking in empathy at times! (How we act online and off can be just such a test.) Science fiction is full of human-like androids who yearn to be human. In this they are very similar to us: to be human is to strive to transcend what we already are. Intelligent machines do not develop unprecedented challenges; they remind us of the oldest test of all, how to be human.
John Durham Peters is the María Rosa Menocal Professor of English and Film and Media Studies at Yale University.
This story appears in the October issue of Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe.
