What Does Artificial Intelligence’s Growth Mean for Humanity?

“Any intelligence is good. If you do not have natural intelligence, then artificial; if you do not have organic intelligence, then synthetic.”

—Sadhguru

Q: Sadhguru, you spoke about making the right priorities so that we are available to truth in life situations. Our societies across the world are pursuing artificial intelligence at a swift rate, from labs at IIT and Stanford, to companies like IBM and Google. Do you think AI is a good priority for humanity to pursue, given its power to bring about new discoveries and productivity? Does it have the potential to enhance human life and make truth mainstream?

Sadhguru: Any intelligence is good. If you do not have natural intelligence, then artificial; if you do not have organic intelligence, then synthetic. But any intelligence is good if it is intelligence. Suppose the walls in your house turned out to be intelligent ones, is it not fantastic? The only thing is, if they get smarter than you, you may feel a little insecure! Otherwise, having a lot of intelligent things around you is a great blessing.

Only somebody who wants to be the smartest person around will feel insecure if all the things around him become smarter than him. Otherwise, it is such a blessing. If you had a pen which could write what you want without you touching it, if there was a phone that would say what you want to say without you having to say it, would it not be nice? Any intelligence is good.

Without intelligence, there is no truth. Lies have not always happened because of deceit. Lies have also happened because of ignorance. Intelligence, intelligence and intelligence is the only solution to make truth mainstream.

The Robots are Coming!

Especially, as external technologies grow, suppose robots start doing all the work you are doing now, what are human beings going to do? They are already talking about robots that will win the football world cup by 2050.

Your thoughts and emotions are also something that can be artificially created. Some time ago, some researchers set up a computer to test how people can have relationships with computers. Many people had a wonderful relationship with this computer over email, not knowing that it was a computer. And it was managing this with twenty lines of vocabulary.

Technology is moving in a direction where artificially, a computer will be able to think a million times better than human beings, because thought is fundamentally computing. Data is assimilated and then it comes out with something sensible from that. As computers evolve, a computer will be able to do this far better than a human being. This evolution is not even going to take a very long time. It will happen in a short time. Then there will be no value for human thought. All the thinkers will be out of business!

But that is only intelligence. That is not consciousness. Our thought, our emotion, these have nothing to do with consciousness. Once everything is well, what are human beings supposed to do? Human beings are supposed to be joyful, blissful and do something that no mechanical thing can do. A robot can do everything that you can do – except it cannot meditate because there is no consciousness. So, ultimately, only meditators will be employed!

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