UCL School of Management Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour Dr Sunny Lee and Organizational Psychologist Dr Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic have come together to share their thoughts on the implications of mainstream AI in an article for Fast Company.
With the debut of highly versatile, viral, and pervasive technology as ChatGPT, there are bound to be consequential repercussions on how humans behave. By failing to experiment, learn, and co-create with the very new technologies we create, we increase the probability that those technologies replace us.
ChatGPT is a wake-up call for humanity to harness four unique and precious human virtues:
- Humility
The realization that AI can handle even creative and intellectually complex tasks should be a humbling experience for us. - Curiosity
The AI age has amplified the (already high) value of curiosity in the realm of human virtues, redefining the meaning of expertise. - Self Awareness
Understanding ourselves in the age of AI means paying attention to how our interactions with technology are reshaping our behaviors, and what they tell us about ourselves, including our dark side traits. - Empathy
Through recognizing our intellectual and epistemic limitations and appreciating others’ strengths, even if they are machines, we can become less self-focused, and paying due attention and recognition to others, ultimately leading to feelings of empathy and gratitude.
Changes brought about by AI are not necessarily about creating new human behaviours. Rather, AI reveals, amplifies, or augments existing human beliefs, habits, and adaptations. For example, pushback against ChatGPT exposes our human inability to accept that something could be smarter than us, even when it is our creation and a natural —okay, artificial— extension of our intelligence.
Ironically, such defensive pride, and the tendency to dismiss AI in order to reaffirm our intellectual superiority over the machines we’ve created, would put our own value and future at risk.
In their view, the evolution of AI innovations is not just a technological breakthrough but also a catalyst for a much-needed shift in our thinking about ourselves and our relationship with the world.
You can read the full article here.
