Above: Pericles, Socrates, and artificial intelligence.
When we think that people outsource thinking to AI, we can ask whether those people outsource that ability to some outside thing anyway? Are thoughts already outsourced? The AI as a replacer. The human thinker. It is the end of the long journey. In ancient Greece, regular people outsourced thinking to philosophers. The problem with philosophers is that if something went wrong, people blamed them. That brought a new way to make philosophy.
That thing is called sophism. Sophism is one of the most harmful things to philosophy. The idea of sophism is to please the majority. The reason for the death of Socrates was that the sophists asked why people who have wealth should abstain from using their wealth. The key element in Socratic philosophy is moderation in everything. People. Who received the sentence of death? Understood that they should share their wealth or give it away for free.
So if something didn’t please people, the reason for that was in the philosopher. Not a person who misunderstood those orders. Those orders or advice were somehow complicated. After. The time of ancient Greece. People outsourced their ability to think to the universities. Regular people had time to sit in beer houses and leave dark things to people who had time to think about things like falling meteorites. Why should people read things like complex mathematics if they have good salaries anyway? And if something new comes to the workplace, the leader of the gang. Can. Just refuse to use that thing.
When we think that people outsource their thoughts to AI, we mean. A situation. That person. Will just. Give the AI-generated answer forward. We can ask. Would that person read those answers anyway? Even if. They are written. By. A real human. Politicians like Pericles. Used sophist philosophers to make text that pleased people. The people whom Pericles must please were people who made decisions in Athens. So, the sophists should only please people who have power. So, if we want to think like Pericles, we should please people who own companies. Those people make decisions. So they are people whom we should please.
If we want. To succeed as a company leader. We must think like a banker. We must maximize incoming money flow. And minimize outgoing money flow. If we want to succeed as politicians, we must think like Pericles. We must please people. Or most people must like us. That is the conflict. And the third thing. It is. Interest of the state. The interest of the state means. The state must somehow protect its citizens. And that triangle is sometimes very hard to fit as an entirety.
We can see artificial intelligence as an opportunity. But then. We must determine the meaning of the word: “opportunity”. The opportunity can mean that artificial intelligence makes work easier, and leaves more time for social life. But we can determine the opportunity another way. We can determine that artificial intelligence gives opportunities to fire workers. So, in the last case, we can see that. Artificial intelligence is the tool that allows one to earn more money. The AI allows workers.
To make their work faster. And that is one of the things that requires new ways to think. In traditional capitalism, faster work means that a person can do more work. And this is one of the things that we can understand when we develop AI. The main problem with AI development is that. Money controls those corporations. We say that. The workers lose their productivity. If. They work with AI agents. But then again. We must determine productivity. If. We calculate. The productivity. As a form. Of a series of physical items.
We can calculate: how many things the worker makes. Or, if the worker works with immaterial products. Like code for the computer program, we can calculate how many acceptable code lines the worker does per day. Or maybe. We should calculate productivity. As production cycles. Each. Of the products. What a person produces is a cycle. That includes the beginning. And the end of the work. So, we can calculate. How many cycles does a worker do during the day? Then we can set the goal for that person.
Maybe. Our worker should make five cycles each day. So, what if the worker completes those five products or production cycles in six hours? That means the worker has two hours of free time in the workplace. In traditional capitalism. That free time is the time. That is out of the time. That. The corporation pays for. So. The leaders might see that time as free time. The thing is that. The person reaches the production goal, but in a shorter time. And that means the production goal is reached, but the entire worktime is not filled.
We can also determine. The term “productivity”. As the income or profit. That the company brings to its owners. And if. We think that way, we can search the department. There are four people with two free hours in a working day. And then we can fire three of those workers. That is allowed in working life.
Another thing is that the AI causes corrosion in thinking. The corrosion means that when people use AI, they leave the answer that AI gave. Without. Even looking at it. That is one of the things that causes discussions. When we outsource our work to machines, that should make life easier. But, machines bring unemployment. We can outsource thinking to AI. And that has a corrosive effect on humanity. When we think about free time, we should also ask what the person does during their free time.
People can go out. Or. They can go to the library. Read books. They can read books. From. The net. Or listen to recorded books. They can use “text-to-speech” applications to transform any text into speech. And listen to those things while they go jogging or to the gym. Or they can sit in social groups. And think about things. Like. How corrosive the AI can be. In that ideal model, people use their free time for self-education, advancing their ideas. And improve their skills.
But otherwise, people can go to a bar, sit there, and drink beer. They can outsource everything to AI. And university lecturers or some other thinkers. Because those people will not get money for their studies, they don’t study. Have those people ever? Open a single book in their lives? That is one other way to think about things.
