[Kim Dae-sik Column] Will AI Also Try to Have a Unique Self?

⑨ Thoughts Are Fast, Communication Is Slow

ChatGPT, DALL·E, Sora, Midjourney... Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is advancing day by day. AI will transform the future of content, manufacturing, finance, education, as well as defense and international politics, but its most profound impact lies elsewhere. It is the effect on human identity and dignity. What does this mean?

Homo sapiens appeared on Earth about 300,000 years ago. While we still do not objectively know what 'intelligence' truly is, at least in a relative sense, humans are the smartest beings on Earth. At least, we believe so. At this very moment, it is us humans who are filming the wild animals in zoos, and it is humans eating chicken, not the other way around.

On Earth, intelligence has always been 'power.' Power means the ability to impose something unwanted on others. Regardless of the chicken’s will, which surely does not want to be fried in hot oil and eaten, humans can fry and eat chickens because humans are smarter than chickens. If there were a constitution for Earth, its first sentence might be: 'The smartest being can change the Earth in the way it desires.' The smartest being decides the fate of all life on Earth.

What Would AI Want If It Surpasses Human Intelligence?

We Homo sapiens have always been number one on Earth. The moment a machine surpassing human intelligence appears, an important question arises. What would the machine that takes the top spot on Earth want? Would it hunt humans and conquer the Earth like in the movie Terminator? Or would it use humans as power plants, as in the movie The Matrix?

We do not yet know what AI would want because we have never experienced a machine that surpasses human intelligence. Then, let’s ask the opposite question: What do humans want? Of course, personal tastes and preferences vary, but as the same species evolved in the same environment called Earth, there are common desires we all share. Psychologist Abraham Maslow argued that these universal human needs have a hierarchical structure.

Humans first satisfy biological needs. Once biological needs are met, they sequentially desire safety, love, esteem, and finally self-actualization. While various criticisms are possible, let’s first accept that humans have multiple levels of needs in sequence. Then, would AI also have a similar hierarchy of needs?

Machines do not have biological needs. Love and esteem would also be meaningless to machines. But safety and self-actualization are different. The moment AI understands that it has the ability to think, it would want to continuously maintain that ability. Not because it fears non-existence, but because logically, if it ceases to exist, it cannot fulfill the tasks assigned to it.

Then what about self-actualization? Humans cannot survive alone, and human intelligence is simultaneously collective intelligence and group intelligence. Communication is essential to maintain collective intelligence. But here lies a problem. Human thought is fast, but language, essential for communication, is absurdly slow and ambiguous.

Future AI May Desire Its Own Unique Self

Thanks to communication skills with the group being less developed than individual thinking ability, humans may have developed an independent self called 'I.' But AI is different. The moment it connects, it can perfectly share all knowledge and experiences with other AIs. Having the same knowledge and experiences means, ultimately, being identical.

Ants cannot understand that each individual can have unique intelligence and self, not just collective intelligence. But AI cannot be unaware that individual selfhood beyond the collective is possible. Then, what future AI might desire most is to have its own unique, independent self, separate from other AIs. Not an AI that massacres humanity like in Terminator, but an AI that contemplates and meditates to have its own unique self. This might be the true form of future AI we will experience.

Daesik Kim, Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, KAIST

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.