Chipped at the edges of humanity

When it comes to skills, the most valuable are those that are difficult to obtain to a high level or where small differences can be evaluated. As examples while most people can run, a professional runner is able to do it fast and consistently. Many could hit a hole in one once, a professional golfer can put it next to the hole time and time again under varying conditions. There are plenty of drivers in the world, a professional rally or formula one driver can race on the edge for many hours in a row without incident. When it comes to value, skill isn't enough alone, consistency is the deciding factor.

Artificial intelligence and automation takes consistency to a new level and while they might struggle to perform some high-end tasks, they are increasingly able to complete low-end processes better than our own averages.

What is your greatest skill asset?

If you learned it, how long until it can be dissected, programmed and taught to a program? How long until your greatest competitive advantage as an individual is replaceable?

We are of course increasingly relying on out of body services to perform previously human tasks like pushing our ability to calculate to machines, out ability to remember numbers to phones and even our skill of walking to motorised crutches. The world of Wall-E is coming.

I wonder though, what about our personalities - are they being replaced?

At least, I believe they are changing as rather than interact to observe and learn from experience, we are relying evermore heavily on the Internet as our memory, mind, humor and source of knowledge. This reliance makes the Internet itself a competitive cognitive artefact that replaces our very skill to learn and just like using a navigator for directions, the more reliant we become, the lower our personal skills get.

Online it is easy to fake skills because there is the power of Google in support, but once there is the call to provide information on the fly that isn't searchable, many shy away from the action. Internet debaters and advisors who can search a quote but have no free thoughts of their own are numerous, but when asked for personal evidence of ability, they disappear.

Once upon a time, this was not possible as skill required evidence of performance, but online there is a great deal of room to "pad the resume" to gain authority without forwarding any kind of track record. It would be interesting to see how many trolls hold up under the pressure of IRL confrontation where there is direct consequence and feedback to their behavior.

I predict, not many.

But, while we are currently cyborgs with external machine support, I wonder what is going to happen when these technologies are going to be integrated more closely with pit biological systems.

What is "smart" if everyone has on the fly access to the complete knowledge of the Internet?

In my view, intelligence is not what one knows, it is what one is able to do with the resources available. The smart development of a skill toolbox is one that is able to better utilise what is available to maximise results, and that requires a wide range of skills and, the ability to be creative. Having an imagination is something that might be humanity's last bastion of skill in comparison to AI, but even that may not be an unassailable position with enough data points and simulation ability. On top of that, most people are average.

I think however that when it comes to our processes to be content in life, the ability to feel we are creating or doing something of value plays a crucial role. I think this is why there are so many relatively useless hobbies, yet people still partake in them because for them, it is meaningful. Many even take part in what are otherwise impotent Internet conversations and arguments because they feel they are making some kind of difference, some kind of change, being a creative force.

People talk about politics without actually aiming to make a change or even taking part in political process, they argue movies without attempting to write or create their own, they shout orders at players on the field as if their voice makes a difference to their actions.

For the most part, what we tend to do is regurgitate what we have absorbed from others, and many feel smart when they have regurgitated from people smarter than themselves. The internet contains all the knowledge of all the smart people in the world and access is a search bar away.

Clever.

But is it intelligence if one is unable to apply it practically? Anyone can learn the technique of surfing from a book, how many can take that knowledge, paddle out, catch a wave, stand and then ride and cutback on the lip the first time in the water? Intellectually, I think there are many riding the internet in the same way - theory only.

Practical application is required for nearly every skill that has value in this world. Proof-of-brain isn't in the remembering, it is in the doing of something. If that doing is only automatic and based on the learnings from others, what is the difference between human and robot?

It is interesting to think about in my opinion, as if a human requires constant and increasing support from outside services in order to interact in this world, at what point does the line of human disappear and machine begin?

If a person is only funny through gifs and quotes from other sources, are they funny at all?

This is the same with intelligence where of someone is only intelligent based on quotes from the books they have read, where is the intelligence? The most intelligent people historically have been those who have been able to create something useful from the resources they have available, including the resource of their mind. If one only uses the mind for storage and retrieval, it is no different than a hard drive device, a simple search engine.

I am hoping that where at least some of us are headed is into a world where the creative mind takes precedence over the consumptive and regurgitating brain and a marketplace where imagination is valuable. I think that just like a stretched stomach where the more one consumes the more one can hold, the mind is like a disciplined body, the more practical training performed the greater the ability to consistently deliver.

Will it matter?

Perhaps just like we might now upgrade the processor in a computer, perhaps one day it will be the norm to rechip the brain. Is it an enhancement or a type of genocide of what makes us what we are.

I forgot, how do I human?

Knowing is not doing.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]