Fully Human #1 – You Are More Than You Think

What we humans can do that no superintelligence can – and a simple exercise that makes it tangible.

Lesen Sie diesen Text in Deutscher Sprache hier.

Dear reader,

In this newsletter and podcast episode #149, I talk about the theme of my book Fully Human – Being Fully Human in the Age of AI, which I published seven years ago, back in 2019. The German, slightly expanded edition is titled Die mutige Führungskraft. Führung auf Basis eines erweiterten Menschenbildes (The Courageous Leader: Leadership Based on an Expanded Image of the Human Being). Both books are available on Amazon or directly from me.

What is it about? As a layperson – and I emphasize this explicitly, as a layperson and contemporary who tries to read the signs of the times – I have tried to understand artificial intelligence in relation to the human being. Hence the title Fully Human. How do we preserve our full, our not-yet-attained humanity in the face of the rapid development of AI?

In the first chapter I briefly describe what, in my view, happens when the machine reaches the level of human intelligence – so-called artificial general intelligence, AGI – and what happens when it surpasses this level and becomes smarter than humanity, so-called artificial super intelligence, ASI. Nick Bostrom describes this in his book The Intelligence Explosion. There he shows how the machine then learns exponentially faster than before, and how it becomes impossible for us to keep it under control. We then no longer know how the machine will react or what it will do.

We are creating something highly intelligent, connecting it among other things with weapons and war – and we don’t know how this intelligence thinks and acts. We can already see humanlike robots that play table tennis perfectly or leap nimbly over hurdles and then even repeat the movement backwards, like a film played in reverse. Fascinating – a human can’t do that. Yet for all the justified fascination, I am skeptical that this will turn out well if we don’t also develop ourselves as human beings.

And here lies a key point: human development is slow. And when it is slow, it is healthy. As soon as it speeds up, one easily falls into unhealthy extremes. Healthy development should go hand in hand with a healthy balance of different abilities and qualities.

Many people say: AI is just a tool, what matters is how we use it. That is of course true – up to a certain point in the development of AI, namely artificial general and superintelligence. We are dealing with a self-learning system. That is, logically, a black box. Connected to this is the alignment problem: How do we teach AI our moral and ethical values – and, above all, will it actually abide by them?

My great concern is that we are creating something we can no longer control.

This brings me back to the question of being human, of being Fully Human. What task do we set ourselves? There are those who say that the transition to the machine is the natural next developmental step for humanity. I take a different view. I want to preserve my humanity and continue to unfold my human potential.

For this, it is worth looking at the human being itself. One can divide it into three regions: at the top the nerve-sense system, in the middle the rhythmic system with heart and lungs, at the bottom the metabolism with the limbs. Each of these systems has two aspects – an inner one and one that establishes contact with the outer world. With the heart, for example, the cardiovascular system is the inner aspect, and the breath is the connection to the outside.

And this is precisely where a wonderful possibility lies. In the HeartMath heart exercise, which is called Heart Lock-in (tm) I first bring my awareness to the region of the heart; second, I breathe there a little more slowly, in whatever way feels pleasant; and third, I call up an empowering feeling – gratitude, appreciation, compassion, love, peace. Through the interface of the breath, I consciously shape my inner system and thereby influence the heart rhythm and heart rate variability (HRV). A nervous state thus becomes a harmonious, coherent one.

The crucial thing about it: I can consciously choose an empowering feeling. Many people don’t even know that this is possible. Painful things happen to us – often there is nothing we can do about that. But how I deal with them inwardly is in my hands. We humans have this free capacity to influence our feelings and by this our physiology, even if it is not always easy.

It may perhaps seem presumptuous to speak of such things in times of war and suffering. My concern is that we keep making ourselves aware of what an enormous potential we human beings have.

In subsequent episodes and writings I will explore more of the human potential.

Thank you very much for reading, and until next time.

Alexander Schwedeler