The New AI

Years ago, I had an interesting discussion with a mask-maker in Bali. He said something to the effect of, “You Westerners are very clever with all your machines and inventions and ways of making money, but you only think with your head. We Balinese think with our liver.”

 

That intrigued me. One function of the liver is to aid metabolism, the chemical processes that convert food into energy for life-sustaining functions like breathing, growing, and repairing cells. Applying this to thought, “thinking with the liver” helps convert “food for thought” into both intellectual and spiritual thought, helps repair cells damaged by wrong thinking and brings breath—inspiration— into the process. Catabolism breaks down the nutrients to make them usable for life energy in the manner of critical thinking, anabolism helps build new materials, in the manner of creative endeavors. The liver also builds immunity and detoxification, protecting us from purposeful lies and toxic practices, aids with digestion, again, helping us separate the nutrients from the waste material (ie, the truth from the bullshit) and helps store the vitamins vital to our physical (and in this metaphor) mental health.  In short, thinking with the liver is a more wholistic, life-sustaining process than mere cleverness. That Balinese artist knew what he was talking about.

 

That’s the kind of discussion we need when talking about the onslaught and wholesale invasion of AI. All cleverness, confusing intelligence with making predictions and re-arranging existing thought and language, outsourcing our capability to grow our own potential to think for ourselves. As a teacher, this is the death-knell of our profession. Might it be useful in quickly summarizing a thousand pages of a lawyer’s brief into something more understandable and time-efficient? Might it help point us to the three “best books” written about a particular subject by reliable deep-thinking human beings? Might it show up at the top of the Google page summarizing the function of the liver? Sure, it can! Might some of that be useful in our own thought-evolution? Yes, it can. 

 

But then why does it need expensive billboard space on 9 out of 10 ads in San Francisco? Why isn’t that balanced by thought-provoking questions or social justice concerns or poetry on those same billboards? As always, follow the money. It’s the same old playbook that happened with computers. “This is the future! Your child will be left behind! Get yours now—and then the update one year or six months or two weeks later!” The promoters are not spiritual teachers concerned for the well-being of the species. The motivation is not enlarged thought or more open hearts or more expressive bodies or more connected communities. Its meta-message is “Machines are more reliable than humans. Our creations are more intelligent that our own capacity to create. Thought and feeling and values are commodities and get yours now! And make us rich!”

 

Meanwhile, the therapist’s offices are filled with people who are lonely, disconnected from others and themselves, unfulfilled, anxious, stressed, fearful because the whole thrust of society is to bond them with machines and disconnect them with fellow humans. They drive to their therapy appointment in the back seat of a driverless car, then home to shop online or if they have to go to a grocery store, choose the self-check-out, have e-mail conferences with their kids’ teachers, work from home in their isolated office with co-workers they rarely meet in person, scroll through their phones every few minutes designed to addict them and succeeding wonderfully. And then they wonder why they feel lonely and blame their mother or themselves. 

AI is just the next member of the “machines will save us” family and while we continue the fantasy that “it’s just a tool and we should learn how to use it creatively,” absolutely nothing is truly preparing us for how to do that. Because we’re not having the essential discussion that even makes that a remote possibility. The one that asks, “Who are we? What are we here for: How do we organize our lives around the human values that help us to think, feel and connect?”

 

And so I offer THE NEW AI, which is actually as old as the hills. Artistic Integrity. Learning to think like an artist, as the people in Bali and Ghana and the American (and international) Jazz community do. Using all eight intelligences at once in a flowing, interconnected conversation with each other. Analytic thinking dancing with creative thinking, with the heart and body and soul always present together on the dance floor. And that whole show connected with that most neglected of human values these days, Integrity. Which Mirriam-Webster defines as:

1.    Firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic value: incorruptibility  

      2.  an unimpaired condition: soundness

     3. the quality or state of being complete or undivided: completeness   

 

The tributes to recently deceased jazz drummer Jack DeJohnette continue to pour in because he embodied ALL of it. An extraordinary musician with integrity. The essence of the new AI. As you defend the invasion of the other AI, consider this: No one will ever write a tribute to a loved one saying, “He/she knew how to use AI really well.”

PS: I, Doug Goodkin, wrote all of the above with the resources of my own brain, thought and expressive capabilities.