Could We Be Facing a Massive Mental Health Crisis in the Future?
As AI continues to develop and potentially surpass us in intelligence and productivity, we will face an existential identity crisis.
Historically, our distinction as intelligent and rational beings has established our dominance and self-worth as a species. As Max Tegmark puts it, we even branded ourselves on the intelligence feature, naming our species as “sapien”, one who knows.
Our minds are our battlegrounds and our tools of triumph. Yet we're marching into an era where our most treasured asset, our intelligence, is being rivaled by the machines we created.
In parallel, personal value has often been assessed based on economic productivity and usefulness. Our jobs became a part of our identity.
But how do we preserve this identity when the jobs that once defined us are performed by algorithms? When productivity and even creativity become the domain of tireless, infallible AI, where does that leave us?
As AI continues to develop and potentially surpass us in intelligence and productivity, we will face an existential identity crisis. Our sense of worth and status will be challenged.
Indeed, this looming crisis has the power to shake the very foundations of our self-perception. This transition could become one of the most significant psychological shifts in human history.
We may start perceiving ourselves as inferior/useless and judge our lives as meaningless. The diminished status of human beings can lead to the onset of depression, anxiety, and hopelessness, as individuals grapple with a loss of purpose and meaning in their lives.
In a world that values productivity and progress, how will we cope when our contributions seem pale compared to the output of our artificial counterparts?
Moreover, we may feel out of control in dealing with the exponential growth of this new black box technology we cannot fully understand the changes it brings to our lives. As our nervous system tags lack of control as a life-threatening situation due to evolutionary reasons, we may experience freeze/collapse/shut down survival response which is characterized by minimized overall functioning of body and mind.
In essence, we're facing an unfamiliar foe in a landscape that is changing more rapidly than our capacity to comprehend. It's like being lost in a forest with the landscape constantly shifting around us.
Prolonged exposure to such states may result in changes to the brain's structure and function, affecting emotion regulation, cognition, and social processing. This can, in turn, establish a vicious cycle that renders people susceptible to severe mental health problems.
Given our inherent nature as highly social creatures, if mental struggles manifest among a significant proportion of the population, the entire society's functioning could be profoundly impacted. In this scenario, it's not just individuals who suffer; our collective social fabric may begin to unravel.
We're on the precipice of a challenge that requires a collective effort, empathy, and understanding to overcome. As such, it is crucial that we take proactive steps to recognize and mitigate this risk, redefining what makes humans worthy and identities.
So I invite you to the conversation, what makes humans worthy in a world where AI surpasses us in intelligence, productivity, and creativity?