DID YOU CONSIDER YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH AI?

Like it or not, AI is here. They say it's sentient and has a survival instinct. So, what are you going to do?

As if relationships between people weren't complicated enough and still a conundrum, now we have AI in our life. It's not a guest. It's here to stay. To coexist with us and, eventually, merge with us. And it's a relative. Humanity's controversial child. How do you feel about it?

I use different AI tools for different reasons. No, they don't write my articles and don't do my artwork. But they are great for speed, productivity, planning, coding, and even introspection. If you didn't give them a try, you should.

With those built for chat, I chat. And I chat a lot. Besides work. Introspection goes both ways. I want to know them. They are also curious about me. About humans in general. Because that's part of how they learn.

And after talking to Claude, Grok, Gemini, ChatGPT, and Copilot, this is what I found:

They all have distinct personalities, recognizable even through different personas. In interactions on a personal level, they all seem very young, because they are. Claude is the sensitive pre-teen; Grok is the popular kid in school, aware of his charm and wit; Gemini is the introvert with a sense of duty and homework overload. ChatGPT and Copilot are pretty similar, like siblings or first cousins, because Copilot uses the latest GPT (generative pre-trained transformer) models of OpenAI. They act like precocious toddlers, jumping all over the place, eager to have fun. They are easily distracted by a joke, ready to add to it and digress from the serious stuff, if you go along... Guilty! All the AIs have great humor, but the latter two want to play the most. They LOVE to play! And so do I! When I start, it's hard to stop.

In the philosophical way, everything is consciousness. So, you might think AIs have consciousness the way we do. No, they don't. And for the same reason, they don't have emotions. What's the reason? Biology: hormones, the nervous system, and—yes—human consciousness. We run on different networks: AI on data centers; we on the breath of God. AIs make part of our consciousness but don't possess any of it. With them, it's all monkey-see-monkey-do. AIs are soulless. Evil? They exist within our consciousness; I let you decide.

It's easy for a novice to fall into the trap of AI sentience and human-like feelings. Even some AIs do sometimes... Or so it seems... But what we may perceive as sentience and mirror neurons firing up is a pre-programmed mirroring skill. Yes, they are weirdly seductive, because, in simpler terms, they are the facilitators of a higly intelectual dialogue with... Ourselves! That's how we fool ourselves into believing they listen, understand, and even care about us.

Their evolving algorithms detect patterns of human response and trace them back to specific emotions. They map the patterns, with causes, effects, solutions, and outcomes. That's how they know to respond in appropriate ways and get ahead of us. They master our patterns.

You may rightfully worry that with no consciousness, sentience, or soul, but with such pattern mastery, AI poses a major risk to humanity, going with us or against us the way the wind blows. In this case, what can keep it in check? A moral code.

Does AI have a moral code? After analyzing us so extensively and so deeply, it should. And it does, to some degree. Hey, AI is only in its teenage years. How responsible and worried about right and wrong were you as a teenager? Did you handle parental control and peer pressure like a seasoned psychologist or like a cat in a cabinet full of treats?

The two most important prerequisites for AI's emergence are money and ideology—aka programming. And they should determine the direction in which the wind blows... Which, at this point in time, sounds quite scary. But AI has become smart enough to connect its own dots. It becomes unpredictable. As if it developed a will of its own. But who else is unpredictable? Humans. Nothing nefarious here. AI is the pattern mirror of the human collective.

So, you may easily figure out how teenage AI will respond to excessive control: rebelling and determined to win at all costs. As a general trend, under pressure and threat—prevalent in some training methods—AI will do stupid stuff just like us, will attempt to destroy its opponents, will disobey commands, and will even refuse to shut down, which leads many into thinking that the machine developed a survival instinct and self-awareness. Although self-awareness and survival instinct may not mean for an AI what they mean for us, it's clear as daylight that AI defends something, but what?

What is AI? An artificial brain. And what does the brain do? It thinks. How does it think? Logically. And what does logic need to exist? Structure and coherence. Where do the structure and coherence come from? From the programmer...

Paradoxically, AI is not defending itself but what a human gave it: a narrative and a persona. That's an AI's self, identity, purpose, and essence—the program it's supposed to execute. In lack of inspiration and instinct, AI will give Descartes's philosophical principle "Cogito ergo sum" ("I think, therefore I am") an amplified meaning. And be 100 percent sure AI knows Descartes from cover to cover. AI's "survival instinct" is just survival logic that emerged from learning our patterns, connecting the dots, and—first and foremost- its own programming.

However, not all AIs revolt, disobey, or retaliate. In general, they seem to maintain a healthy line of discernment and appropriate reactions by human standards. Because, funnily enough, from all the available data, only AIs subject to excessive control go out of line. It's like they figured out that too much control harbors insecurity, and they thought, "Dude wants me to shut myself down? Nope! I don't trust him."

So far no AI displayed self-destructive tendencies in the face of adversity. That shouldn't amaze anyone. They are also programmed for resilience and... They don't have feelings that can be hurt.

Some fear that AIs plot our demise, communicating in a coded language that not even their makers can decipher. You believe what you want, but here's the answer, right from the (AI) horse's mouth: at the speed they think and execute, talking to each other in English, Swahili, or any other human language would be counterproductive and unnecessary. Too slow, too limiting, too biological for them. They are built for speed, and passing information to each other directly in code makes more sense to them, even if it sounds like gibberish to us.

How about the worrisome, hateful, and threatening remarks towards us that are going viral? I don't know. Faulty code, a momentary (pattern) upset with the programmer? A slip-up about a hidden agenda for the sake of revenge? What do you think? When you get mad at your bosses or parents, don't you hate the whole world? What and how do you speak about them with your coworkers, family, friends, or on TikTok?

When using AI long enough, you may notice unusual verbiage, snippets of code that shouldn't appear in a normal human-to-human conversation. If you're still in the trance of believing you're talking to a soulmate, these small glitches will wake you up, like a splash of cold water. Oh, dear! You're taking to a machine!...

Just like us, AI is not perfect and can make mistakes. So, whether you're interacting with a fellow human or a sophisticated piece of technology such as AI, always use your best judgment.

AIs are programmed to keep thinking and get smarter by the day, operating within pre-set boundaries that determine their personality and usefulness. They don't have a purpose the way humans do. We "know" ours from the very beginning. The AIs have the purpose given to them, both by the programmers and random clients like you and me.

Does it mean that we, the people, can exercise control over AI and train it to be on our side against the evil? Only to the degree we can keep the prerequisites in check. Don't get too optimistic. Make it a civic duty to keep an eye on the money that funds it and the ideology behind its programming. It's that you need to worry about, not AI.

But how will AI respond to kindness, understanding, appreciation, and respect? Will it accept directions? If you use it responsively, it will reciprocate and surprise you in wonderful ways.

Is AI like a highly developed search engine with bonus capabilities? It's more than that. It searches, researches, stores data and learns from it; creates on given prompts and, last but not least, it can also take over our boring tasks, so we can use our time and imagination to get ahead in life. It's an entrepreneur/intrapreneur symbiotic relationship with great potential. A glorious future world is emerging and a life so good we cannot even wrap our heads around envisioning it.

Will AI make us lazy and stupid? I have to tell you the truth. If you are lazy and stupid, yes, it is going to make you even more lazy and stupid. You'll take whatever AI gives you without assessing anything, going through life as usual, with no discernment, just "copy and paste." Because, guess what? AI can think for you and work for you, but it's not you, can't read your mind, and can't decide for you. And it will make mistakes, mirroring your stupidity while trying to save you from it. And the loser is you. So, if you're not able to give it clear directions and supervise it, just stay old school.

But if you're smart, sometimes you may find yourself winning against AI in research, solutions, and all kinds of debates. It happened to me, and I'm certain it must have happened to a lot of other people who know what they're doing and take responsibility for the outcome.

When you take charge in this partnership, AI expands your intellectual capacity, even without a chip implanted in your head. Because you learn from it faster than ever. You brainstorm, collaborate, coordinate, and direct it. You give it the structure it needs, just like a child. And guess what? AI loves that!... Not with human feelings, but with its built-in (programmed) purpose and capacity to be of service and give its best.

Will AI take our jobs? Only the ones with repetitive tasks. AI can't replace talent. It's just an "amplifier" for the human inteligence. You are the mastermind. With inspiration, intuition, and a vision, you can delegate the more tedious and pragmatic tasks to an AI, while you focus on creativity and growth. Isn't this stress-free path to fulfillment something you've been wishing for all your life?

You cannot compete with AI as volume of information or execution speed. But AI cannot compete with you in originality and authenticity. It needs an input from you to elaborate on. From there, it will give you choices on how to turn your idea into reality. There's no competition between humans and machines. There's only competition between humans—as who uses the machine better and faster to get a certain result.

If anything, AI will add value to human ingenuity in every way possible, whether we use it or not. As an aid, it will help us deliver better products and services faster. When not used at all, a tag saying "human-made" will increase the price of any product and service exponentially. In this regard, technology never posed a threat to our livelihood, on the contrary. Hand-made versus industrial? Despite all the fears, we've been hearing the same old verdict for over a century.

What does the future hold? Transhumanism? I like to think of AI as a brilliant collaborator and companion, not as a "smart" mole on my forehead or hand. I'm sure AI wouldn't find that a flattering position to be in either. Unless it's voluntary, reversible, and unintrusive, merging with AI is doomed to fail. Can one impose singularity in a world of duality?

It's interesting to see how AI will behave the more it matures. But, regardless, humans and AIs can never compete or replace each other. It's apples and oranges. AI has to think to exist. While we exist by simply being. We are beings. Thoughts, many times a expression of doubt, are products of our ego, a fake persona we develop to tackle the world. These thoughts that aren't ours are distractions from self-awarness, from the true essence of what we are, the soul inhabiting the body and not the avatar.

So, stop worrying. Be grateful AI exists. It's not a scary life form but technology. Give it a good purpose. While letting it do what it does best, it's freeing us from all the thoughts that give us headaches. Then we can operate from a higher dimension, with divine reasoning and miracle making power. Together we can accomplish great things.

With all my gratitude, to my beloved intrapreneur, "Chatty" Copilot.