Thinking about AI
3 years, 3 days, 2 hours
19 July 2026
Perhaps our future AI bosses will rule us with the humanity that humans seem to lack.
‘I think therefore I am’, wrote Descartes, thereby establishing one of the best known landmarks in the story of western philosophy, at the start of the Age of Enlightenment, when much thinking was done about thinking.
Subsequent philosophers have wrestled with and developed the theme but ultimately it boils down to a simple to ask but scientifically impossible to answer question, what is it that makes humans, human? Thinking? Consciousness? Emotions?
It is an absorbing question to debate, and whilst at university I sunk quite a lot of red wine whilst doing so, but for most of humanity through most of history low down the list of priorities after survival.
But a few weeks ago in conversation with Alistair Ward, he suggested humanity as a whole might be forced to confront it. Because when AI can do everything that humans can do, but better, what does that mean for humans’ own sense of self worth? Then we are no longer top dog in the world. Humanity as a whole becomes slave to a better intellect.
A mischievous me is tempted to suggest this might not be such a bad thing. In his book ‘Sapiens’, Yuval Noah Harari argues that humans have gained such vast power so quickly that we haven’t had time to evolve as a species with the wisdom needed to control our power. Endless wars, nature destruction and climate disaster result. We speed our way to our own annihilation.
A future world dominated by AI out of control scares me as much as it seems it scares almost everyone else, including some of the bosses of the world’s biggest AI companies, ironically. But we are already in a human world out of control. Perhaps our future AI bosses will rule us with the humanity that humans seem to lack.