Can AI help us become kinder?

I enjoy hearing all the buzz about generative AI along with the pros, cons, doubts, and fears being speculated over the past year. I’ve always been an early adopter to new technologies and have never avoided or felt threatened by a new medium or tool. 

For some time now I’ve been thinking about how the dominance and oversaturation of printed words gradually (almost inperceivably) diminished compassion, feelings, and empathy in exchange for elevated literacy and logic over the course of the modern age.

Back in a day when information was more manageable, print technology brought unity, understanding, and knowledge in addition to creating margin, that allowed time for more thoughtful consideration and civility. As literacy and education grew and spread, these traits replaced the impulsive and seemingly irrational, less civilized behaviors found in more oral traditions. (Pre 1500s)

During the late 1800s and thru the 1900s that valuable margin had begun to close. And by the end of 20th century, the healthy time gap between learning, understanding, and response all but evaporated. A behemoth print industry along with the advent of various electronic technologies took our literal minds to a new unexplored level. Although the incremental increases in the speed of communications began to compress our world, information was, for the most part, still unified and dependable. Increased speed brought expectations of faster response and resolution to questions and concerns, along with swift logical conclusions to complex and often emotional challenges. In short, less patience and consequently less concern for others became the norm due to the efficiency and automated characteristics of the developing media. The beginnings of a technological induced anxiety that would soon reach a level extreme enough to influence sociological behaviors was born.

Around 2005, something historically significant began to evolve. After about 400 years of the printed word being the dominant communication medium, suddenly it was not. (You may be old enough to recall owning 26 volume sets of family encyclopedias or seeing 3″ thick metropolitan Yellow-page phone directories in hotel rooms.)

Digital communications and digital information changed not just how we interact but how we collectively behave. They quickly took what I call the hyper-literacy of the over-extended print medium to a staggering new level. One that further repressed feelings, emotion, and empathy exponentially. (We didn’t become illiterate, but our sociological behaviors began to appear more reflective of those seen in pre-modern oral and tribal cultures, as post modernism became reality.)

Two Conditions Collide:

2005. For the first time in human history, we were able to have bi-directional, synchronized audible and visual communication, around the globe, seemingly at instantaneous speeds. In other words, although we can continue to improve the quality of sound and visuals, there will be no more meaninful increase in speed or reach of communications. Unlike with early print, there is little mental and emotional margin left to contemplate and consider options, cool off, reduce anger, diffuse tensions, resolve conflict or seek advice with discourse when making critical decisions. The constant expectation of immediate response, action, and results is becoming progressively more oppressively life-sucking.

The second result of the digital medium is the ability to access information about most anything at anytime from anywhere. Information is basically limitless, and accuracy is sometimes questionable at best. There’s a loss of reliability in much of what we read, see and hear.  Information is no longer linear and stable. It can be intercepted from several sources simultaneously, and in random sequences. Information is absolutely abundant but can also be untrustworthy or maliciously corrupted at times.

Although the incremental increases in the speed of communications began to shrink our world, information was still mostly unified and dependable.

The Result:

The result of these two realities is that humanity has quickly reached a maximum limit to the speed at which it can communicate and is reaching a point of endless quantity of available data. Some information is useful and applicable but most is unneeded or irrelevant to us individually.

The human head and heart, as conditioned by modern history, simply cannot consume and discern the onslaught of information and digital media stimulation that we now have access to. Combined with years of repressed emotional empathy thru the 20th century, it’s evident that people, in general, are now acting out more impulsively, with less civility, and sometimes even violently with little or no external prompting. Even otherwise thoughtful and considerate individuals seem to have reached their capacity to care and generally be kind to others beyond their immediate families. Many of us are now generally more critical, cynical, sarcastic, inward focused, and feel the freedom to immediately respond and oponionate carelessly without shame or filter.

Merely navigating daily life in this post modern time is inherently stressful and depletes us emotionally and mentally. This condition has become the cultural norm and is the only reality those born after 1990 will be predominantly shaped by.

What If:

What if this new era of Artificial Intelligence can create tools to help us get our collective life and humanity back? Is it possible that AI can be the neutralizer for the over saturation of information access that feels so out of control at the moment? Can AI help regain some of the healthy margin, knowledge and discourse that was so revolutionary with early print technology, before the advancements of electronic and subsequent digital technologies?

How can AI be developed and practically utilized by individuals as a quality of life tool to develop healthy boundaries with information and technology, and regain a general sense of compassion for others?