The recent rise of generative AI has greatly elevated human anxiety of being displaced by emerging technologies. The imminent threat makes it worthwhile to reflect upon our uniqueness as humans, for while AI is a powerful tool that can augment human abilities, it’s not without its limitations.
As an associate professor at the Carlson School of Management, I ask students in my Artificial Intelligence class two questions: 1) What are the key differences between humans and machines? 2) If one day machines could do most things we humans can do, what makes us uniquely human?
I, too, shall try to answer these questions. Compared to machines, humans have conscience, emotions, self-awareness, empathy for others, and the ability to build relationships.
Perhaps the most notable difference is humanity’s imperfections — and sometimes irrationality. To err is human. Consistency or predictability is both a strength and a weakness of machines. Once machines learn to behave in certain ways, they do it quite consistently, unless the algorithm changes. Even generative AI has bounded creativity. In contrast, we humans are less consistent or predictable, or more divergent and spontaneous in our thinking. We can be careless, forgetful, or lazy. We are easily swayed by trivial things like the weather, what we eat for lunch, or social encounters.
Humanity’s imperfections or spontaneity are not always a weakness. Sometimes, this “flaw” leads to amazing discoveries or creations. Fleming might not have discovered penicillin if he had not left a pile of dirty Petri dishes on his workstation before his vacation in 1928. Greatbatch might not have invented the implantable pacemaker if he hadn’t accidentally installed the wrong resistor onto an oscilloscope in 1956. Van Gogh might not have painted “The Starry Night” or had as much emotional depth in his paintings if it was not because of his unique personality.
Another key differentiator, at least for now, is understanding. As humans, we do not just recognize; we understand what we hear, see, or say. When AI labels a dog in an image, it does not understand the concept of a dog. Instead, it is simply recognizing cues associated with a dog image. As a result, subtle manipulations of an image, completely unnoticeable to human eyes, can cause AI to “see” and label, for example, a school bus image as an ostrich. For today’s AI algorithms, no matter how powerful they appear, their decisions or actions are based on pattern recognition, not true understanding. They are like the horse named “Clever Hans” from 1907 that solved arithmetic problems by reading his trainer’s cues without actually knowing the math.
You might wonder, “Why bother asking or thinking about the differences between humans and machines.” One of my favorite quotes about AI is from researcher Pedro Domingos: “People worry that computers will get too smart and take over the world, but the real problem is that they’re too stupid and they’ve already taken over the world.” Not yet, but they will if we let them.
As the whole world rushes to jump on the AI bandwagon, it’s important to contemplate the long-term impact of AI adoption on our culture and society, and on human creativity and agency, especially those of our children. Otherwise, it will be another large-scale social experiment with many unintended consequences, similar to what happened when we rushed to hand our children smart devices with little parental control a decade ago.
We live in an era in which machines are becoming more and more like humans while humans are becoming more and more like machines. As machines continue getting smarter, our last resort as humans may be our agency or conscience. Machines take actions not because they “want to” but because they are programmed to. We humans have the ability to choose what we want to do or what we believe is right or wrong to do. I hope these valuable traits that make us uniquely human will continue to prevail in the age of AI.
