The Attitude Lounge with Kodwo Brumpon: Uniqueness in the age of AI

 “Those who are absent are always wrong.” – African proverb

As our excitement about Artificial Intelligence (AI) grows, one of the essentials many of us are overlooking is how important it is to be our unique selves.

As we get bombarded with lots of AI-generated content, human-generated work will become prized specifically for its humanity—its imperfections, its idiosyncrasies, and especially for its authenticity.

We know human potential is jagged, unlike Artificial Intelligence which is fundamentally a technology that is brilliant at recognising patterns and optimizing them. It is wonderful at tasks that have a clear, definable best outcome or a single right answer.

That is why it would always excel at tasks like data analysis, code generation, etc. Being human on the other hand is quite difference.

We are subjective beings because we experience everything differently, even when two or three people are offered the same involvement. Our consciousness differs. Artificial intelligence on the other hand operates on data and algorithms, and thus functions on processing objectivity.

Our jaggedness is such that we operate on different angles on the same scale. While one person might have off-the-charts empathy but be a mediocre mathematician, another can be an incredible creative visionary but might struggle relating to others. This jaggedness is not a flaw; it is what makes us humans.

For example, we are a combination of logical and illogical decisions. Our creativity and innovations are quite messy because we are inspired by bizarre connections between unrelated life experiences.

Even, when we assume we ‘know’ another person, and can comfortably predict what he or she will do in a situation, the reality almost, always different. This is unlike Artificial Intelligence, whose creativity is bounded by the data it has consumed.

So, we can come up with a new movement that is a break from all previous patterns, but the intelligent tool we have created, cannot intend to do that. Rather we must teach it to generate something like that.

This example is one of the many reasons why our uniqueness will become the most sought-after attitude in this Artificial Intelligence Age. This means the future belongs to those who are curious, adaptable and purposeful.

Now, we no longer must spend a lot of time collecting information. Our technological tool will do that for us. This frees time for us to act. In other words, we must cultivate the ‘doing’ attitude. We have created a co-evolving relationship between humans and machines, and so we must teach ourselves to be unique, that is to think critically, act ethically and create value.

The call to promote our individual uniqueness stems from the fact that we derive meaning from how we connect information to our emotions, memories, and cultural contexts. Artificial Intelligence cannot do that because it cannot feel. We can feed it information about what our feelings are, but it cannot have that subjective experience even though it can process what we feed it to generate some insights about ourselves.

As a matter of fact, the onset of Artificial Intelligence has challenged the long-held belief in meritocracy, which is the notion that hard work and intelligence lead inevitably to success. Now, more than ever, we are beginning to understand that adaptation is more important than merit.

Beyond the fact that we are different and live under different circumstances, with different strengths and interests, the data on success stories show that our ability to adapt our interests to trends and changes have always been the key. We now know we cannot all succeed in the same way.

This knowledge is driving a movement where individuals are betting on themselves to become viral trends for others to imitate, instead of everyone imitating one person. The world is now celebrating difference, rather than conformity. Thus, it is better to understand your strengths and highlight them whilst admitting that weaknesses so that you do not spend time on trying to succeed with it.

The bottom-line is despite all the buzz about Artificial Intelligence, we created it as a tool to improve our efficiency. To this end, there is no way it can compete with us. That best metaphor to describe this relationship is like a librarian and a library. We are the librarian, and Artificial Intelligence is the library.

It contains all the books, all the information, and can retrieve any fact, cross-reference any idea, and even generate new text that sounds like the books it holds with incredible speed. Nevertheless, it is the librarian who understands and appreciate the meaning of the books, recommends a novel that will change your life, sees a gap on the shelf and writes a new book to fill it, and hosts a community book club that connects people. Let us therefore use the library as a tool, and let the value come from our unique wisdom, intention, and human connection…

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