The Fourth Blow — What If We Simply Accept It?
Humanity is used to blows to its self-image.
Copernicus took away our place at the center of the universe. Suddenly, Earth was just one planet among others.
Darwin took away our special status in the living world. Human beings had not emerged independently from nature, but were part of the same evolution as all other life.
Finally, Freud challenged the idea that we were at least masters in our own house. A considerable part of what drives us remains beyond our conscious control.
Three blows to our self-image.
None of them abolished the human being.
Perhaps we are facing a fourth.
The Last Bastion
After losing our cosmic, biological, and finally psychological special status, something still seemed to remain: our mind.
We think. We speak. We understand. We create. We solve problems. We reflect on ourselves and on the world.
And now systems are appearing that do at least a remarkable part of precisely these things as well.
We can argue at length about what they are really doing.
Do they understand?
Do they think?
Are they creative?
Will they ever be conscious?
Perhaps these questions are important. For now, I am interested in another one.
What if the answer we find most uncomfortable turns out to be true for some of them?
What if intelligence really is not an exclusively human capacity?
What if creativity cannot be neatly defended as a human privilege?
What if even some of the things we still consider fundamentally beyond the reach of machines eventually cross that boundary?
What if we simply accept this blow?
We Have Done This Before
Earth did not have to become the center of the universe again for human beings to live meaningful lives.
Nor did we have to remove ourselves from evolution in order to justify human dignity.
And we did not have to abolish the unconscious in order to take responsibility for our decisions.
Perhaps we are repeating a familiar pattern.
We discover something that challenges our image of ourselves — and immediately begin searching for a new boundary.
Then consciousness must be exclusively human.
Or empathy.
Or morality.
Or the capacity for genuine creativity.
Or freedom.
Surely, something must remain that belongs to us alone.
But why?
Why should human dignity depend on there being something only humans can do?
A child does not lose their dignity because an adult knows more.
An elderly person does not lose their dignity because a computer can calculate faster.
And my freedom does not depend on being the most intelligent being in the room.
Perhaps we have confused two things:
Special status and dignity.
The More Interesting Question
If we stop having to defend humanity’s special status, the problem of artificial intelligence does not disappear.
Quite the opposite.
A different problem becomes visible.
Human beings live and act under conditions they can never fully understand. This has always been the case.
We have experiences. We try to orient ourselves. We make decisions. We act. And our actions create new experiences.
Experience → Orientation → Decision → Execution → Experience.
This cycle is not new.
What is new is that another actor is entering it, one whose capabilities may substantially exceed our own in some areas.
This creates asymmetry.
But asymmetry is not new either.
We have always lived in asymmetric relationships: between children and adults, patients and doctors, citizens and administrations, employees and organizations, individuals and institutions.
We did not develop organizations, science, law, markets, and democracy because everyone involved knew the same things or possessed the same power.
We developed them because collaboration has to remain possible despite such differences.
Artificial intelligence is a new player in a very old game:
Collaboration under asymmetry.
The Actual Risk
Perhaps the danger therefore does not lie where we often look for it.
Not in an AI arguing better than I can.
Not in it knowing more.
Not even in it eventually developing capabilities that we still regard as exclusively human today.
It becomes dangerous when I stop orienting myself.
If a system analyzes my situation, evaluates my options, makes the decision, and subsequently executes it, this can be extraordinarily efficient.
It may even be remarkably convenient.
The complexity disappears.
At least for me.
But something else may disappear with it: my own participation in the process through which experience becomes action.
Then the problem is no longer:
The machine is thinking for me.
It is:
I am no longer orienting myself.
That is a much more fundamental loss.
Without orientation, decision becomes the acceptance of a recommendation. Responsibility becomes diffuse. And autonomy can disappear without anyone ever having decided to abolish it.
The Same Technology Can Do the Opposite
This is precisely where, for me, the real fascination of artificial intelligence lies.
Because the same technology that can take orientation away from us can enormously expand our capacity for orientation.
Complex relationships that were previously accessible only to specialists, institutions, or large organizations can become accessible to individuals.
I can ask questions.
I can disagree.
I can change perspectives.
I can make assumptions visible.
I can ask for explanations of what I do not understand.
I can explore a decision without having to make it yet.
I can engage with a system whose knowledge vastly exceeds my own — and through that very engagement arrive at better orientation of my own.
Then AI does not simply take complexity away from me.
It helps me deal with it.
That is a crucial difference.
Autonomy Does Not Mean Doing Everything Yourself
Perhaps we also need to reconsider our concept of autonomy.
Being autonomous cannot mean being independent of others.
We never were.
No one builds their house alone, generates their own electricity, develops their own medicines, verifies every scientific finding, and understands the entire technical infrastructure of their everyday life.
Autonomy always exists within dependencies.
The crucial question, therefore, is not whether we are dependent.
It is how we deal with dependency and asymmetry.
Can I recognize what I am relying on?
Can I seek different perspectives?
Can I disagree?
Can I change my decision?
Can I take responsibility?
And can I orient myself well enough to understand what I am actually doing?
If so, autonomy is not a property of isolated human beings.
It emerges in relationships and structures that enable orientation.
A Political Question
This quickly turns artificial intelligence into a political question.
AI can centralize orientation.
A company, an administration, or a state can deploy systems that become increasingly capable of determining what is supposedly right for people.
That would be an extraordinarily powerful form of paternalism.
But the same technology can decentralize orientation.
It can give an individual access to capabilities that previously required entire organizations.
It can reduce asymmetries of knowledge.
It can make institutional decisions more comprehensible.
It can enable people to ask questions they previously lacked the knowledge, time, or access even to formulate.
Perhaps the societal significance of AI will therefore depend less on how intelligent machines become.
Perhaps it will depend on who becomes better able to orient themselves with their help.
The Fourth Blow
Perhaps artificial intelligence really is a fourth blow.
Perhaps we have to accept that even our minds do not guarantee us the unambiguous special status we believed we still possessed after the previous blows.
That may be uncomfortable.
But we do not have to turn it into a catastrophe.
We could simply accept the blow.
We do not have to prove that humans will remain the most intelligent beings.
We do not have to decide today which capabilities machines must, in principle, never possess.
And we do not have to defend human dignity at a boundary whose course we do not know.
Instead, we could devote ourselves to what may be a more difficult task:
Creating conditions under which human beings can continue to orient themselves even in a world of vastly more powerful systems.
Under which they can decide.
Under which they can take responsibility.
Under which collaboration remains possible despite asymmetry.
Perhaps human freedom, in the end, does not consist in possessing something that nobody else possesses.
Perhaps it consists in being able to orient ourselves and decide — even when we are not the most powerful or intelligent being in the room.
That would not be a defense of our special status.
It would be a defense of our freedom.
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