As you may have noticed, this year, I have started to move away from being a purely technology-based blog.
Last year, while checking in with my lifetime objectives, I realised that I wanted to learn as much as possible about the world around me and my place in it. To help me learn, I need to write about it and share it with others. Writing will help me learn by forcing me to process this knowledge, and feedback from others can help me with this.
The rise of generative Artificial Intelligence isn’t just going to disrupt the way we consume content. In the future, when we are stuck, instead of a search engine serving up a list of potentially useful web pages, it will just attempt to answer the question. That change is one of the reasons I’m moving away from writing so many how-to guides, as Artificial Intelligence will be able to answer many of them with relative ease. I would have looked to make this move even if I hadn’t changed my lifetime objective.
This likely disruption highlights one of the most fundamental questions we can ask in 2025 and beyond. What does it mean to be human?
Fundamental questions like this have been asked for thousands of years, and throughout history, we have been trying to answer them through Philosophy.
Why we must start asking these philosophical questions now
Amir Husain stated in his book The Sentient Machine that there will be a small window of time where Artificial Intelligence will act as a mirror on humanity and can help us answer the following questions. It shows a reflection on ourselves as we interact with models that appear to us to have some intelligence.
- What is it that makes us uniquely human?
- Do all our complex goals come from our biological needs?
- How will Artificial Intelligence’s ability to use language impact us?
- Can Artificial Intelligence become conscious?
These are not easy questions to answer, and I’m certainly not going to answer them in one blog post. Hell, I doubt we will agree on an answer before General Artificial Intelligence arrives. After all, we have been asking questions like these for thousands of years without making any real progress. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t ask ourselves these questions.
Philosophy will help us frame these questions and the feedback we receive from the Artificial mirror so that we can form arguments that might help us answer them. Philosophy will also help us address other fundamental questions that will arise as the interaction between humans and Artificial Intelligence continues to develop.
I’m still figuring out how this would work in practice.
Navigating an Intersubjective World with Philosophy
I have recently become interested in how we view the world and the concepts of objective, subjective, and intersubjective views. Concepts I was first introduced in Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari and it seems to be fundamental concepts as they keep coming to the fore in both the content I consume and the content I create.
Our ability to share an intersubjective view has allowed us to create technology of the mind; for example, by agreeing on what symbols mean, such as the letters and words, we were able to invent writing. A permanent way of capturing and sharing our ideas with another person who has the same intersubjective understanding as the writer through space and time.
According to Yuval, human language is the operating system of humans due to the fact that capability has allowed us to build a cocoon of intersubjective reality in which we all live.
With the invention of the large language model, we have given Artificial Intelligence the keys to our operating system, giving it the means to communicate with not just us but other Artificial Intelligences through space and time. This raises the question of how this will impact our cocoon of intersubjective reality.
Even now, in the early days of large language models, we are consuming content written by large language models. I wrote this paragraph after feedback on my final draft, and it suggested that I should add more on how large language Models could impact the cocoon of Intersubjective reality. Its response has influenced my action. One paragraph on its own will have no impact, but how many would?
Philosophy on CTNET: A Path Forward
For these reasons and a growing general interest in philosophy. I want to bring more philosophical discussions to CTNET. Subjects I’m likely to cover include.
- The meaning of life in the digital age
- How philosophical frameworks can help us navigate complex social and political issues
- The nature of consciousness and sentience
- What makes us uniquely human?
- How will Artificial Intelligence’s ability to use language impact us?
Engaging with these questions can help us develop a deeper understanding of ourselves, our technology, and our place in the world. I invite you to join me on this journey.
I would love to hear your thoughts on my questions and what questions you think we need to answer before the emergence of Artificial General Intelligence.
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Further reading
- Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari
- Sentient Machine by Amir Husain
- Navigating the Future: Insights from Yuval Noah Harari on AI and the Humanity
- Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari- Three Types of Reality and how They impacts us
- Why I replaced Obsidian Smart Connections with Obsidian Co-pilot plugin
- The Power of the Focusing Question: My biggest take away from The One Thing by Gary Keller