PART IV — Looking Ahead
Chapter 20
The Human Advantage
AI Can Do More. That Doesn't Mean It Decides What Matters.
If AI can increasingly write, calculate, search, analyze, create, and even carry out tasks, it is natural to ask:
What remains especially valuable about being human?
I don't think the answer is simply a list of things AI cannot do.
The answer is found in the things that give our actions meaning:
purpose, curiosity, judgment, taste, relationships, responsibility, and the ability to decide what matters.
AI can contribute to the work.
It doesn't decide why the work matters.
Purpose Comes First
Think about the Fishing Pond game I created for my granddaughter.
AI could write the code. It could change the movement of the fish, add features, and produce new versions.
But it couldn't answer the question I actually cared about:
Would my granddaughter enjoy playing it?
That was my purpose.
I had to decide what kind of experience I wanted her to have, what seemed appropriate, and when the game was good enough.
AI supplied a capability.
I supplied the reason.
The same thing is true of this book.
AI has helped with research, drafting, revision, organization, and many other parts of the work.
But AI didn't decide that I wanted to write the book.
That decision came from me.
Curiosity Still Matters
I remember the 1964 World's Fair and the Bell Telephone exhibit at Disneyland. I remember technologies that seemed futuristic at the time and later became ordinary.
The Dick Tracy wristwatch once seemed like science fiction.
Now we carry technology that can do things far beyond what those imagined devices could do.
AI has brought that same sense of curiosity back.
What can it do?
Where will it go?
What might it make possible?
Those are still questions worth asking.
But curiosity needs something else beside it.
Judgment Becomes More Valuable
When information was difficult to find, one of the challenges was finding it.
When information becomes abundant, another challenge appears:
Which information deserves our trust?
AI can give us more answers.
It can compare possibilities, explain ideas, and present different points of view.
But we still have to decide what makes sense.
That is judgment.
The more capable AI becomes, the less useful it is to think of the human role as simply checking the machine's work after everything important has already been decided.
The human should help decide what we are trying to accomplish, what information matters, what risks are acceptable, and whether the result makes sense.
Efficiency Isn't the Same as Effectiveness
This is where an idea from earlier in the book becomes personal.
AI may make necessary work faster.
But what happens to the time we save?
We could fill it with more email, more meetings, more documents, and more obligations.
Or we could decide that some of that time belongs to us.
Looking back on my career, I sometimes wish I had been able to spend more time with my wife and children. Work mattered to me, and being a provider mattered to me, but there were times when work took more time and attention than I would have wanted in retrospect.
I cannot change those years.
I can think differently about the years ahead.
Perhaps some of the time technology gives us back can go to family, music, learning, volunteering, travel, hobbies, or simply doing nothing.
A life doesn't have to be optimized every minute to be a good life.
What You'll Discover
The book goes further into the human qualities that may become more valuable as AI becomes more capable:
purpose and deciding what is worth doing;
curiosity and the willingness to keep learning;
judgment when answers become abundant;
taste and knowing what good work looks like;
responsibility for the results of our decisions;
relationships and the parts of life technology cannot replace;
and the difference between saving time and using that time well.
The larger lesson is:
Human abilities don't have to compete with AI. They give AI a purpose.
Try It Yourself
Think about one task AI could realistically take over for you.
Then ask a second question:
If AI handled that task, what would I want to do with the time it gave back?
The answer may tell you something more important than how much time AI can save.
It may tell you what you value.
Why Read the Book?
Chapter 20 brings together many of the ideas developed throughout Understanding AI and asks a larger question:
What should we bring to the relationship with increasingly capable AI?
The book goes further into purpose, curiosity, judgment, taste, responsibility, relationships, and the choices we make with the time technology may give us back.
AI may write the paragraph.
You decide whether the paragraph belongs.
AI may create the image.
You decide whether it communicates what you intended.
AI may produce the recommendation.
You decide whether it fits your life.
AI may save an hour. You decide what that hour is worth.