Today (May 27) is the 100th birthday of former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. A few days earlier, he gave an eight-hour interview to The Economist, and his thinking was amazingly clear: "Artificial intelligence, a disruptive technology with the potential, could become a key factor affecting global security within five years, and we need to exchange information on the impact of technologies on each other and take a small step towards arms control." ”
This year, Kissinger and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and MIT Schwarzman School dean Daniel Huttenlocher jointly published an article in the Wall Street Journal entitled "ChatGPT Heralds an Intelligent Revolution," arguing that "artificial intelligence is trying to change human cognitive processes, a shock that has not been experienced since the invention of printing." As its capabilities become more extensive, they will redefine human knowledge, accelerate changes in the fabric of our reality, and reorganize politics and society. ”
As a politician who has had a profound impact on today's world order, his insights quickly attracted global attention. At the time of a full century of his life, following "On China" and "World Order", Kissinger once again launched a new book, "The Age of Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Mankind", which deeply discusses the above views.
Written by | Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, Daniel Huttenlocher
Artificial intelligence could lead to the end of the Enlightenment
In 1450, Johannes Gutenberg, a goldsmith in Mainz, Germany, used borrowed money to develop an experimental printing press. His efforts were hard to say because his business was in trouble and creditors sued him. But in 1455, Europe's first printed book, the Forty-Two Lines of the Bible, appeared. Eventually, his printing press sparked a revolution that reverberated in all areas of life in the West and around the world.
The invention of the printing press replaced liturgical doctrine with the pursuit of empirical knowledge, and the Age of Enlightenment gradually replaced the Age of Religion. Personal thought and scientific knowledge replaced faith as the main criterion of human consciousness. Information is stored and systematized through the expansion of libraries. The Age of Enlightenment is the source of many of the ideas and actions that shape the contemporary world.
Generative AI presents a philosophical and practical challenge that has not been experienced since the beginning of the Enlightenment. The printing press enabled scholars to quickly replicate each other's discoveries and share them. The unprecedented integration and dissemination of information has produced the scientific method. What was originally airtight became the starting point for accelerated queries. The medieval interpretation of the world, based on religious beliefs, was gradually weakened. The depths of the universe can be explored until new limits of human understanding are reached.
The Enlightenment sought to give way to traditional truth to the analytical rationality of the liberated man. The purpose of the Internet is to acquire knowledge by accumulating and manipulating ever-expanding data. Human cognition loses individual characteristics. Individuals become data, and data becomes rulers.
When information is contextualized, it becomes knowledge. When knowledge is convincing, it becomes wisdom. However, the internet has allowed users to drown in the opinions of thousands, if not millions, of other users, depriving them of the sense of solitude they need to keep thinking, and it is this sense of solitude that historically has spawned faith in knowledge. As the sense of solitude disappears, so does the spirit of perseverance—knowing that not only does the formation of belief require perseverance, but also to maintain loyalty to belief, especially when it needs to be acquired by passing through a path that has never been trodden by anyone before and is therefore often a lonely one. It is only when this belief is combined with wisdom that people can enter and explore new horizons.
The digital world has little patience for wisdom, and its values are shaped by approval rather than introspection. It essentially challenges the Enlightenment's claim that reason is the most important element of consciousness. The digital world removes the limitations of past distance, time, and language on human behavior, and it provides a meaningful connection in itself.
With the rise of artificial intelligence, the definitions of human roles, human aspirations, and human achievements will all change. What qualities of human beings deserve praise in this day and age? What are its guiding principles? People have two traditional ways of understanding the world: faith and reason; Now a third is added - artificial intelligence.
In an age when AI can evaluate everything in our lives, predict what will happen next, and decide what to do, an age where reality can be predicted, approximated, and simulated, the role of human reason will change. Our sense of purpose for individuals and society will change accordingly. In some areas, AI may enhance human rationality. In other areas, AI may give humans a sense of exclusion.
Each society has two choices: one is to fight for itself; The other is to start a dialogue with the intention of cooperation, using the progressive power of all mankind to define the role of artificial intelligence, while clarifying our own role. The former path is abstained acquiescence, while the latter requires the sober participation of leaders and philosophers, scientists and humanists, and various other groups.
Ultimately, individuals and societies will have to decide which aspects of life should be left to human intelligence and which should be left to AI or human-to-AI cooperation. Cooperation between humans and AI is not a peer-to-peer relationship. Ultimately, AI is both built and directed by humans. But as we become accustomed to and dependent on AI, limiting it can lead to higher costs, more difficult psychological challenges, and even more complex technologies. Our mission will be to understand the changes that AI brings to the human experience, the challenges it poses to human identity, and which aspects of these developments need to be regulated or balanced by other human obligations. How the future of humanity will emerge depends on the definition of humanity's role in the era of artificial intelligence.
The AI revolution will happen faster than most people expect. Unless we develop new concepts to explain, interpret, and organize the transformations it brings, neither the impact nor the impact on AI will be able to control. Morally, philosophically, psychologically, practically, and arguably in all respects, we find ourselves on the precipice of a new era, with no way back. We must use our most fundamental qualities and resources, such as reason, faith, tradition, and technology, to adjust our relationship with reality so that reality remains a human reality.
Artificial intelligence will trigger a revolution in education
The advent of the era of artificial intelligence will change our relationships with others, as well as with ourselves. Just as there is a generation gap between today's "digital natives" and previous generations, there will be differences between "AI natives" and their predecessors.
In the future, kids may grow up with more advanced AI assistants than Alexas and Google Homes, which combine nanny, mentor, advisor, friend and more. Such an assistant can teach children almost any language, and can also train children to learn any subject, and tailor the teaching according to each student's performance and learning style, so that they can achieve the best learning results. When children are bored, artificial intelligence can act as a playmate; When the child's parents are not there, AI can again become the guardian. With the introduction of education provided and tailored by AI, the capabilities of ordinary people will both improve and face challenges.
The line between humans and AI will be astonishingly blurred. If children use digital assistants at a young age, they will take it for granted. At the same time, digital assistants will grow and evolve with their owners and gradually internalize their preferences and biases as they mature. Digital assistants, whose mission is to maximize the convenience or satisfaction of their human peers through personalization, may give advice and information that may be considered essential by human users, even if human users cannot explain exactly why they are better than any other alternative resource.
Over time, people may prefer their own digital assistants to humans. Because humans don't know how to do what they like, and it's more "annoying." As a result, our dependence on each other and on our relationships may be weakened. What will become of those wonderful qualities and irreplaceable lessons of childhood then? How will a machine that does not perceive or experience human emotions but gives companionship everywhere affect children's perception of the world and its socialization? How will it shape the imagination? How will it change the nature of the game? How will it change the process of making friends or integrating into society?
Suffice it to say, the low-hanging fruit of digital information has transformed the educational and cultural experience of a generation. Now, the world is embarking on another "great experiment" in which children will grow up with machines that will in many ways act like human teachers of previous generations, but without human feelings, insight and emotion. Eventually, participants may ask, has their experience been altered in ways they didn't anticipate or accept?
Parents may reject this technology for fear that this exposure will have an uncertain impact on their children. Just as previous generations of parents limited the amount of time their children could watch TV and parents of today limit the amount of time their children can use digital devices, future parents may limit the amount of time AI can spend with their children. But those who want to push their children to success, or who don't have the will or ability to get their children nurtured by human parents or human mentors and can only rely on AI, or simply want to fulfill their child's desire to make AI friends, may favor having their child with AI. Therefore, these vulnerable children, who are still in the learning and development stage, may form their impression of the world through dialogue with artificial intelligence.
Ironically, while digitization has made more and more information available, it has compressed the space needed for deep, focused thinking. Today's almost constant stream of media increases the cost of thinking, which reduces the frequency of thinking. In response to human cravings for stimulation, algorithms push eye-catching things, and what catches people's eyes is often dramatic, unexpected and infectious. Whether one can find space to think in this environment is a question, and the prevailing form of communication today, which is not conducive to the promotion of restrained reason, is another.
Humanity needs to be prepared for the future
Machine learning systems have surpassed anyone's knowledge. In limited circumstances, they have exceeded human knowledge, beyond what we think of as knowable boundaries. This has already sparked a revolution in the field where such breakthroughs have been made. AI has changed the core problems in biology for determining protein structures and for advanced mathematicians to make proofs, among many other problems.
As models move from human-generated text to more inclusive input, machines may change the structure of reality itself. Quantum theory holds that observation creates reality. Before the measurement, no state is fixed and nothing can be said to exist. If this is true, if machine observation can also fix reality, and given the superhuman speed of observation of AI systems, the evolution of defining reality seems to accelerate. Reliance on machines will determine and therefore change the structure of reality, producing a new future that we do not yet understand, and we must be prepared to explore and lead.
Traditional reason and belief will continue to exist in the age of AI, but its nature and scope will certainly be profoundly affected by the introduction of a new, powerful, machine-operated form of logic. Human identity may continue to remain at the pinnacle of "living intelligence," but human reason will no longer be seen as the totality of intelligence dedicated to understanding reality. To clarify our place in the world, our focus may need to shift from "centeredness on human reason" to "centeredness on human dignity and autonomy."
AI is likely to play a leading role in exploring and managing the real and digital worlds.
In certain areas, humans may obey AI and prefer AI's data processing processes over the limitations of human thinking. This compliance can cause many, if not most, to retreat into a personal, filtered, and customized world. In this context, the power of AI, combined with its pervasiveness, concealment, and opacity, will raise doubts about the prospects for a free society and even free will.
In many areas, AI and humans will be equal partners in the cause of exploration. Thus, human identity will reflect reconciliation with new relationships, both with artificial intelligence and with reality. Different societies will open up different areas for human leadership. At the same time, they will form the necessary social structures and habits to understand and interact effectively with AI. In order to live well with AI, society needs to build the appropriate knowledge and psychological infrastructure and use its unique talents to benefit humanity as much as possible. Technology will force many, indeed, most, aspects of political and social life to adjust.
Some societies and institutions may gradually adapt, while others may find that their underlying assumptions conflict with the way they perceive reality and themselves. These conflicts are likely to intensify as AI facilitates education and access to information, while also increasing the likelihood that information will be exaggerated and manipulated. Individuals will be better informed, better prepared, and more influential in their opinions, and they may demand more from the government.
In this regard, some principles can be given. First, to ensure human autonomy, core government decision-making should be detached from AI-infused structures and limited to human regulation and oversight. The principles inherent in our society provide for the peaceful settlement of disputes. In this process, order and legitimacy are interrelated: order without justification is only power.
Ensuring human oversight and decisive participation in the basic components of government is essential to maintaining its legitimacy. For example, in the administration of justice, the provision of explanations and moral reasoning are key elements of its legitimacy, which allows participants to assess the fairness of the ruling and question it when its conclusions are inconsistent with the moral principles that society upholds. It can be seen that in the era of artificial intelligence, when it comes to major issues, decision-makers should be non-anonymous humans with corresponding qualifications who can give reasons for the choices made.
Every society must first determine the full scope of what AI is and is not allowed to use in various fields. The right to use certain powerful AI, such as general AI, needs to be strictly checked to prevent abuse. Because general AI can be quite expensive to build and only a few organizations can afford it, its use may be limited. Certain restrictions may contradict a society's ideals of free enterprise and democratic processes. It should be easy to agree on other constraints, such as limiting the use of AI in biological weapons production, but international cooperation is required.
Machines will evolve far faster than our genes, causing domestic chaos and international divisions. We must respond accordingly, especially to philosophy and conceptualism on a national and global scale. As Emmanuel Kant predicted three centuries ago, global coordination will need to emerge through perception or disaster.
The EU has outlined a plan to regulate AI, with the goal of strengthening the regulation of how businesses and governments use data and AI, and promoting the creation and development of European AI companies. The regulatory framework includes risk assessments for various uses of AI and restricting or even prohibiting governments from using certain technologies deemed high-risk, such as facial recognition (although facial recognition has some beneficial uses, such as finding missing persons and combating human trafficking). There is no doubt that these initial concepts will face widespread controversy and revision, but it is also a precedent for society to decide to limit the scope of AI and believe that this will allow it to drive lifestyle progress and future development.
ChatGPT's evocative answers to many questions are because they ask more questions than conclusions. Currently, we have a novel and spectacular achievement - artificial intelligence, which is the glory of the human mind. We haven't evolved a destination for it yet. When we become techno-sapiens, we urgently need to define the purpose of our species. It is now our responsibility to provide real answers.
This article, published with permission from the publisher, was originally titled "Kissinger: ChatGPT heralds an intelligent revolution, and humanity is not ready."
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