Artificial intelligence has captured our society’s attention, processing vast amounts of data previously inaccessible, opening up new pathways of information, and advancing new technologies. To survive in this new landscape, companies have applied AI features at an expeditious rate. Meta AI, Google’s Gemini, and Microsoft 365 Copilot are examples of AI being everywhere on the internet. Competition is enticing Big Tech to implement AI in its software, but as consumers and simply as people, we must remain wary of our reliance on AI for the sake of creative thought and progression. Though AI has limitless potential to enhance society, it risks diminishing individual thought, similar to that of the restrictive communal nature of pre-Renaissance society.
By no means do I think we currently live in some dystopian society, guided by AI’s vendetta, nor do I think that possibility is anywhere near. However, I think there is something to be said about the adherence of human nature to take the path of least resistance, and how that relates to AI.
In the pre-Renaissance medieval society, people abided by the standards of their group: their guild, their church, for example. Their guild dictated their profession and overall role in the community. The church shaped moral and intellectual life and thought. There was an emphasis on the group, not the person, shown through artworks that no one took credit for, where people believed God would reward them for their work, not their peers. People valued the group over themselves in many ways, and that has its own benefits, but it is evident from the cultural and political upheaval of the Renaissance that it limits progression. But for that millennium between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the Renaissance, people did what limited trouble, and that was to stick as a group.
This dynamic is what I fear with AI: loss of incentive to independently think, losing out on advancements in science, philosophy, and every field of study you could think of. This will only be a consequence if our society almost solely relies on AI recommendations. With a newer development of AI self-sourcing, getting its information from past AI responses, these recommendations will be only from one limited view, reminiscent of the church’s ideas. The idea becomes more alarming with AI’s hallucinations, instances in which AI completely fabricates information.
With human nature considered from a purely evolutionary perspective, history would suggest that people tend to want to conserve energy. Of course, this is not the case for all of society; plenty have chosen to struggle in the name of a cause, but with AI’s output currently seeing no limit, how are we to say that people won’t start to rely on it as much as possible?
From this historical perspective, imputing AI as a guild/church-like presence in people’s lives sounds alarming, but it’s not the full picture. It showcases a prescriptive impact AI will have on people. That AI will dominate the human mind, with people accepting that they could not be right while an AI is wrong. In fact, according to Pew Research, 50% of people are more concerned than excited about the impact of AI, with a minority of 10% being more excited than concerned. People are questioning AI’s authority, and that is the best way we can approach it. AI is a phenomenal tool, but by no means does it trump someone’s mind to think and reason.
In many ways, I think AI can be an enabling force in society that encourages individualism by providing people with the means of information to create and discover. But blind use, out of convenience, can only stunt society’s progression, undermining critical thinking and returning us to conformity from an earlier stage of society. The future of society does not depend on AI, but on how we thoughtfully utilize it.
