“Outsourcing our Intelligence to AI”

In this episode, we take a break from our ongoing discussion about the features of consciousness to explore a related issue: outsourcing our intelligence to AI. Jameson shares a recent talk he gave reflecting on the private use of AI (i.e. the use of chatbots) and the problem of maintaining our own authentic intelligence. How far is too far to rely on Claude, Gemini, or ChatGPT etc. to avoid undermining or deforming our rationality and status as moral agents? As a philosopher is want to do, Jameson brings up an “obscure” metaphysical debate from the 13th century about the ‘separate’ intellect as interpreted by Thomas Aquinas in order to give context to the question of ‘intellectual outsourcing’. That debate was one of objective metaphysics to determine whether or not human beings natively possess an intellectual power, or if we must ‘tap into’ an eternal, separate world intellect to actually understand anything. With AI, we recapitulate the question of intellectual outsourcing in an ethical-existential mode: should we let AI do our thinking and judging for us, and what impact does this have on being a human person? Josh agrees that the connection is not too far-fetched and offers a way into thinking through how best to use AI. The take-away: Should you trust AI when it says “Austin is the capital of Texas” or “25 x 2 = 50”? No! Strictly speaking, AI cannot witness the truth of its own computations and translations, hence there is no basis for trust as you would have for a friend. Its results should be taken as mere proposals to truth, requiring our own efforts to evidence or verify. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit integralwordspodcast.substack.com