Will artificial intelligence make the human more rational?

Question

With so much innovation, with so much previous human manual labor being performed in minutes or seconds by an artificial intelligence, one day man will put the survival and propagation of his species above his ideologies and cultures.

I am worried because we are living the fourth industrial revolution, and this will generate millions of unemployment, even if new jobs are created in the future. The problem is that a lot of humans worry about their own job, and not about their own children's future. This is completely retrograde.

Will, one day, Artificial Intelligence be able to direct us towards an intelligent path as a propagation of the species, or else center the focus of humanity on something that it adds?

Answer 1

I would counter this question with another one: Is rationality all we strive for?

Intelligence is a waste ground, and we have not even defined which intelligence we're talking about: Emotional Intelligence (empathy), Rational/Intellectual Intelligence (IQ), artistic intelligence, etc. etc. etc.

Something which demarks us as humans is that sometimes we're able to deal with to counteracting intelligences. Logic sometimes dictates one thing, but logic is bound to what parameters are taken into account, and mostly it's about quantifying. an intelligence which does qualitative logic behaves sometimes different, and suggests sometimes other actions. As humans we weight and counterweight these factors.

Politics is a good example. In most countries there are 2 or 3 rational approaches to problem solving (to make it easy let's call them left, center, right - though I know in fact it's more positions and in an at least two dimensional space, not linear). But what I mean is all those positions are rational, nevertheless it's other types of intelligence who define their the way they use their ratio.

So in the end this fourth step is just a continuity and I assume that with time theoretically at least the shift should be away from blue collar jobs to more white collar jobs until there are no blue collar jobs. So far the theory I guess, but then again? Would this be smart? Or intelligent? A world where machines make all the dirty work and we're just supervisors?

My thought to this is we will still need mechanics, probably with more technology always more, just that their focus will shift. 20 years ago mechanics were teached analogue technology, nowadays they learn more digital technology (best example would be car mechanics), but there you see: They're still needed, we also need people with analogue knowledge to mantain older systems which cannot or will not be converted to digital era. And I think that's OK! So from my point of view, nobody has to fear to loose it's job, but instead embrace, that when you keep your knowledge up to date, there will always be a job for you. Nowadays for example IT-professionals who are able to code older computer languages are better paid than ever, because their scarce...

Answer 2

Artificial intelligence may exercise human rationality in some conditions, but if, after a time, all the thinking is delegated to computers, humans are likely to fall backward into superstitious times.

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Since the text of the question unrelated to the title question, I'll treat that as a separate entity.

The fact is that most people do manual labor because they feel they must. If intellectual skills are also replaced by machines, those jobs will disappear, but not because the work is left undone. The farm and factory automation replaced the skilled workers in many cases, but the farming and manufacture continues. The same would be true of office work. The cubes and once coveted window offices will be empty and decrepit, like the depleted oil fields of Pennsylvania, Texas, California, and the U.K., but the office work will continue to flow. The computers are doing it.

Theoretically, the standard of living will remain the same if there is a one to one replacement. If the computers improve above the skill and throughput of people, the human standard of living should increase.

Humans can play sports, watch movies, blog, and garden for fun. A world where there is 100% unemployment but a high GNP is idyllic.

I'm not sure we need to be directed toward an intelligent path in those regards. Now if AI could be used to teach children not to solve problems by beating the crap out of each other, betraying each other, gossiping behind each other's backs, or scheming and scamming then that would be a plus.

Perhaps AI could someday teach people not to drop bombs on each other or point thermonuclear weapons at each other too.