3 steps to align AI with the ancient philosophy of human flourishing

AI has opened a new continent, and humanity is setting foot on its shores

Since humans have walked the planet, we've always been the most impressive, intelligent beings

But today, AI is forcing us to ask the question, what does it mean to be human, to live a flourishing human life

Major moments in science and technology shed new light on long-standing philosophical questions

Copernicus dislodged us from our central position in the cosmos. Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution situated us among the animals

And Albert Einstein and his theory of relativity revealed the limits of our senses and our bare intuition

Now in the age of Turing, technology pushes us to philosophy once again

Philosophy offers not godlike wisdom, but a powerful set of tools of inquiry to move past dogma, past tribalism, and navigate the journey ahead

And the stakes have never been higher. For the past 200,000 years, humans have created technology as tools, as means to our ends

But today, we're creating technology in AI that has the potential to shape both the means and the ends of human endeavor

The printing press never determined what was printed, but today, 20% of human discretionary time is mediated by algorithms that do determine what information is consumed and even how we decide what's good for us

The upside potential to technology is staggering. Consider cancer. Today, a doctor can feed medical images to AI and AI can detect tumors

Tomorrow, AI may even be able to expand our fundamental knowledge of cancer

acting like a human scientist would, and maybe even much better. But what happens when the technology evolves from a tool to an overseer What happens when it starts to substitute for our most essential human capacities One risk is that for the sake of incremental convenience we offload big aspects of our

existence to a kind of super intelligent schoolmaster that tells us what to think

and what to do. Another is that we create a governance structure to control the technology

that ends up doing the same? How do we realize the benefits of AI while protecting the active

use of freedom, that precious gift of modernity that allows us to realize what makes us essentially

human? Today, there are two primary philosophies in the AI field. The first is existential pessimism

or the view that AI poses a dire risk to humanity. This school wants to hit the pause button

But imagine hitting pause before Darwin, before Einstein, or at any point in human history

The losses to humanity would have been incalculably large. In an open society

hitting pause is as impossible as it is unwise. But what is possible, and even likely

is that the quest to optimize the world for safety ends up creating a governance structure

that suffocates innovation, harms freedom, and amplifies bad actors. The opposing school, accelerationism

embraces the power of markets and the role of optimism. But some of the leaders of this movement

neglect to put the human at the center. For them, technology shifts from being a means to being the sole end of human life

Some of these individuals want to accelerate towards the moment when humans pass the baton to AI as the next link in the evolutionary chain

Now, I understand the appeal of saving humanity from extinction. I understand the appeal of building God

But both of these philosophies are misguided what we need is a genuinely positive humanistic vision for the future of AI

Here are three steps to get there. Step one, the North Star

Just like the North Star gives you direction, any new AI philosophy needs to be oriented around the goal of human flourishing

Human flourishing here means discovering and developing your unique gifts. and applying them to become the person that you aspire to be

We need AI and its governance to serve humans, rather than humans serving it

Step two, the compass. A compass is a tool to help us navigate

to help us make decisions along the way. There are three points on the AI compass

One is human autonomy, two is reason, and three is decentralization. Human autonomy is the state of being free

in our mind and in our action. Aristotle taught that autonomy was essential for the full realization of our highest capacities

and to live by our well-considered choices. Without autonomy, we shift from free agents to passive agents

who are increasingly dependent on algorithms to tell us what to do and how to think

Reason is the superpower we use when our mind considers alternatives in pursuit of the truth

John Stuart Mill fought for the widened access to diverse and competing opinions

because he thought it was essential for the pursuit of truth and the cultivation of reason

If AI causes reason to atrophy, humans will slip into dogmatism, intolerance, and persecution

And fields of endeavor that depend on reason, like science, will stall

decentralization is like having millions of mini captains instead of one big boss at the top

when Alexis de Tocqueville stepped on the shores of America he saw a nation characterized by

spontaneous association of individuals who from the bottom up were rallying together around common

interests if we lose decentralization then individuals will succumb to the strong centralizing forces in society Whether that is majority opinion on social media state control or a super intelligent master planner

Step three, navigating the new world. How do we use the North Star and the compass to start navigating this new world

250 years ago, America's founders came together to build this philosophy to law pipeline

Today, we need to build a philosophy to code pipeline. We need to bring practitioners together with philosophers to translate these vital concepts

of human autonomy, reason, and decentralization into the planetary scale systems shaping our future

To do this, we're helping create the first AI lab in the world dedicated to translating the principles of human flourishing into open source software

It's called the Human Centered AI Lab at Oxford University. Top technology talent, more than ever before, needs to build systems that are animated by this North Star of human flourishing

But this requires cultivating a new kind of technologist, a technologist that has world-class AI talent on the one hand and also deep capacity for philosophical thought on the other

Then we need to support those individuals who can build provocative new prototypes to show us how AI and human flourishing come together

We're at a pivotal point in human history, taking first steps into the unknown

If we follow the North Star, if we use the compass, we can settle on this new continent

We can build a vibrant society from the ground up. And we can ensure that technology amplifies human potential and doesn't diminish it

From Copernicus to Turin, it's time to once again find our place in the cosmos