“Core human traits include the ability to learn and master new skills, the desire to be seen as useful to a larger community, a need for a sense of agency in daily life and a longing for a sense of others caring about one’s existence. Without these higher-level needs met, the perceived quality of life suffers, even if the basic needs are satisfied. AI seems poised to threaten those higher needs even if it increases prosperity.
“Learning is based on artificial constraints (the solutions to homework problems are known quantities) and far better essays have been written about the classic texts. Yet, students learn by trying to find the solution and to express their own thoughts, however imperfectly. This is core to the human as a learning being but it is endangered if students get the LLM to do the work. In academic settings, there’s the hope that faculty at least want students to learn, even if that means going back to the early 20th century using pencils in blue books and oral exams.
Interacting with a ‘real’ human will likely become the privilege of the wealth-management set, amplifying the sense that day-to-day life, from medicine to finance, is governed by robots, removing the key component of a sense of agency in psychological well-being. The availability of ‘Her’-like substitutes for human interaction may well further weaken the social muscle of many, feeding the epidemic of loneliness, particularly among teenagers and young adults. AI is more ‘efficient’ than human interaction, with fewer disappointments than online dating, but who will proudly look back on a 25-year marriage with a bot?
“The economic incentives outside academia are less favorable. Initial indications are that machine learning can significantly improve the results of the best performers but leave middling and lower performers behind. ‘Artificial Intelligence, Scientific Discovery, and Product Innovation’ research published by A. Toner-Rodgers in 2024, finds this in a material science research lab. Thus, this amplifies the current problem that everybody wants experienced workers, but nobody wants to expend the effort of turning entry-level workers into those with experience. The ability to progress from limited skill to mastery is a core facet of being a human fully alive and – aside from economic mobility – is a key contributor to a human’s feeling of competence and achievement. AI may remove the first few rungs of the ladder, further limiting ‘skill mobility,’ not just income mobility. This may well also reduce the rewarding opportunity for mentoring that creates a sense of being needed and valuable.
“AI may amplify the existing challenges not just in business and research settings but also in the arts. Already, winner-take-all global distribution channels have made it difficult for early-career authors, photographers, or visual artists to develop and grow (and make a living). AI tools like Midjourney already offer cheap alternatives to stock photography. Composition for functional purposes like meditation or lower-budget films will also likely be replaced.
“Human interaction is starting to suffer, both in task-oriented customer service and in human-to-human interaction without an economic incentive. My father-in-law found company as a widower in talking to the grocery store cashier; he can’t trade a brief comment about the miseries of his baseball team with the automated checkout kiosk. An AI chat interface in an anonymous telehealth clinic can’t sympathize with the patient’s health fears. Interacting with a ‘real’ human will likely become the privilege of the wealth-management set, amplifying the sense that day-to-day life, from medicine to finance, is governed by robots, removing the key component of a sense of agency in psychological well-being.
Bots do not require, foster or reciprocate real-life temperance, charity, diligence, kindness, patience and humility. Indeed, they will likely tolerate and thus encourage self-centeredness and impatience. If we cannot live without bots, can they be turned into training wheels and the equivalent of treadmills at the gym, improving social interaction fitness? … AI will become the attractive nuisance of convenience. We won’t know what we no longer know.
“The availability of ‘Her’-like substitutes for human interaction may well further weaken the social muscle of many, feeding the epidemic of loneliness, particularly among teenagers and young adults. AI is more ‘efficient’ than human interaction, with fewer disappointments than online dating, but who will proudly look back on a 25-year marriage with a bot? Bots do not require, foster or reciprocate real-life temperance, charity, diligence, kindness, patience and humility. Indeed, they will likely tolerate and thus encourage self-centeredness and impatience. If we cannot live without bots, can they be turned into ‘training wheels’ or the equivalent of treadmills at the gym, improving our social interaction fitness?
“As vinyl records and film cameras are getting a modest revival among those who touched their first screen in the crib and as Montessori kindergartens are drawing technology industry parents, there may be the desire for communities that self-restrict technology use, maybe modeled on monastic or Amish traditions. Will these be accessible only to those with the financial resources to exit the productivity race?
“Many uses of AI are beyond the control of the individual – I likely do not have a real choice as a consumer whether the airline or health insurance company ‘serves’ my needs when the point of contact is a chatbot. While I do have some agency on what tools I’ll use to entertain myself or to write a school essay, just as smartphones reduced our navigation skills and our time spent in real-world social settings with other human beings, AI will become the attractive nuisance of convenience. We won’t know what we no longer know.”
This essay was written in January 2025 in reply to the question: Over the next decade, what is likely to be the impact of AI advances on the experience of being human? How might the expanding interactions between humans and AI affect what many people view today as ‘core human traits and behaviors’? This and nearly 200 additional essay responses are included in the 2025 report “Being Human in 2035.”