Identity in The Age of A.I.
The development of AI technologies will bring with it an increasing interest in understanding human identity and human consciousness. As humans, we attach a significant portion of our identity to our jobs. We introduce ourselves by our professions and job titles. We shape our lifestyles and center our mental wellbeing around how we feel about our work.
AI systems are already reshaping the nature of work, and it will eventually cause a parallel shift in human identity. For, without our careers and job titles, who are we? How do we find meaning and purpose in life?
Previously, our work didn’t ask us to think. Most jobs didn’t actually require a brain. They only asked for arms and legs and eyes to perform a task over and over and over. You clocked in at the factory, you knew how many items you needed to get through -- how many wheels to put on a car or products to scan for defects. At the end of the day, you clocked out and went home.
But things are changing.
AI systems are already helping eliminate some of life’s mundane tasks — the highly repetitive labors, like collecting information or searching for patterns data, that demand all of our attention but require none of our creativity or higher order thinking. As these tasks are taken over by AI systems and automated machines, we are beginning to see a decline in the need for manual labor and a rise in the demand for creative decision-making and effective people managers. And it is this transition that is driving change in identity and causing us to question our purpose.
As AI continues to take over the laborious repetitive jobs, people will flock to developing skills to improve their creativity and release their innovative spirit. Indeed, companies are starting to develop training programs for their workforce to prepare them for success in an automated world. For example, Amazon is spending $700MM to retrain their workforce. With these professional training programs in place, we are sure to see a rise in questions on how we develop and reshape our identities.
Speaking for myself, anytime I have attempted to learn a new skill it has altered the way I see myself. If I succeeded at learning the skill (negotiations), my confidence in myself was positively reinforced by the fact that my skills were creating value for myself and others. On the other hand, when I failed to grasp a skill (hello SQL programming) there was a flood of questions directed at my capacity and value creation ultimately affecting how I saw myself.
We all attach our identities to what we do and how well we do it, when this narrative is no longer supporting us it will create a void in our identity giving rise to the exploration of consciousness to discover meaning and purpose. The combination of automation and our desire for meaning have become the catalyst for society to return to our consciousness to awaken our creative powers.
You don’t have to look much further than our phones to recognize that we are starting to tap into our consciousness via the flurry of meditation apps that promise us a moment of clarity and creativity in our days. In more extreme scenarios, we are looking at a plethora of uncomfortable unplugging experiences becoming more and more mainstream.
We see this with the significant rise of individuals identifying as stoic, the hyper-growth of unplugging vacations (where people pay to be literally forced away from their phones) — all this in search of our identities in a technologically abundant environment, now imagine the need for purpose and meaning in a world where automation is the driving force of our society. I believe this paradigm shift will give us the ability to tune in with ourselves, to reach into our purpose, and start authoring our voices from our conscious intuition.
As automation releases us from the mundane the battle for our attention will be hard-fought by social media to bring us back into cheap dopamine and the unrealistic aspect of the mundane scrolling to get us to purchase things. I am not saying that all social media is bad, what I am stating is that inherently it provides us with a false sense of belonging.
With AI providing us with more free time and bringing us to ourselves and we recognize that social media is not where we want our attention to go, we will see that our society will reach out to the spirituality and ideological practices that bring us purpose and meaning of self. Human beliefs regarding the meaning and purpose and value of existence will experience a fundamental evolution in the age of AI. People will seek experiences that make them feel uncomfortable and bring them face to face with their core values and desires. As these practices of self-exploration rise we will see a longing for consciousness to help make sense of our identity
