Opinion: Searching for meaning in AI-driven era
As AI reshapes our reality, reclaiming meaning requires self-awareness, critical thinking, and authentic human engagement
By B Maria Kumar
Are human lives at stake in a world that artificial intelligence (AI) has been digitally colonising? Let’s examine the situation of a doctor who is passionate about serving her patients through innovative and high-quality treatment. Suddenly, AI enters the scene, and she finds a non-human entity stepping in, excelling in diagnostics and therapeutics, leaving her with little to do in the work she has been doing satisfactorily for years. She feels that she is missing something in her life’s purpose.
Consider a labourer who worked in his landlord’s field. His master is pleased to have such a hardworking hand, dedicated to farm work out of zeal for tilling, sowing, caring for crops, and harvesting. Then, one day, he watches his master introduce AI-powered farm machinery that performs more efficiently and productively than he can, and he finds himself sidelined, feeling that he has lost meaning in his life.
In the AI-enabled gig economy, we might initially view it as an advanced system empowering freelance workers. However, a metaphysical perspective throws us into a dilemma about the essence of human existence. A contingent employee, hired as a bike-riding food delivery worker, finds himself not only guided by algorithmic directions but also evaluated by AI metrics based on how quickly he performs his job and how many deliveries he completes.
At the end of the day, his wages are mechanically calculated, irrespective of the hardships of pothole-ridden roads, unsafe traffic, scorching sun, or windy rain he endured. When he reflects before going to bed on how he is living his life, he compares himself to a cog in a wheel, alienated by AI-augmented workforce management, which invisibly strips away his agency, the sense of control he, as a human, wants to exert in his life.
In yet another example, a schoolteacher who blindly adheres to AI-curated lesson plans and content for mentoring her students experiences dissatisfaction because she is imparting not her conscientiously acquired knowledge but something generated by AI, the accuracy and veracity of which she is unsure. Her pedagogy involves inflexible, mechanical compliance with generative AI’s unverified course material. Soon, she realises that she is wasting her energy in a profession that occupies a major portion of her life, without being able to embrace originality, critical reflection, or the freedom to be herself as a self-respecting individual.
Existential Challenges
These examples highlight a few existential challenges exacerbated by AI in contemporary times. Even before AI’s advent, humanity faced ontological predicaments, though to a lesser degree. Centuries before Christ, Socrates, during his trial, emphasised that “an unexamined life is not worth living,” counter-questioning his prosecutor, Meletus, who accused him of defying Ancient Greek edicts that Socrates found irrational and rigid. Socrates exhorted the youth to live honourably by following reason-based principles.
Franz Kafka’s protagonist in The Trial, Josef K, finds himself alienated, without clear solutions, despite his relentless struggles to seek justice for a purposeful life amid faceless, disordered bureaucratic processes. Gregor Samsa, the central figure in Kafka’s another masterpiece The Metamorphosis, wakes up transformed into a grotesque insect, becoming a stranger to his own family, work, and society. His transfiguration symbolises the loss of human identity under societal pressures.
Antoine Roquentin, the lead character in Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea, experiences psychological emptiness while living inauthentically, lost in searching for a meaningless past rather than the relevant present. Sartre asserts that one who negates self-freedom by blaming circumstances lives in bad faith.
Albert Camus, in his essay, references the Greek mythical king Sisyphus, condemned to eternally push a boulder to a mountain peak, to advance his interpretation. Camus observes that everyone’s struggle for survival mirrors Sisyphus’s futile efforts to keep the rock on top. He argues that life’s absurdity persists as long as the clash between the desire for meaning and the universe’s indifference continues, necessitating resolute action.
Fictional Narratives
These crises have proliferated in multiple directions and proportions, propelled by AI in modern times, posing threats to human existence, particularly regarding freedom, meaning, purpose, and authenticity.
Albert Camus argues that life’s absurdity persists as long as the clash between the desire for meaning and the universe’s indifference continues, necessitating resolute action
Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari, known for his groundbreaking perspectives, emphasises that much of our lives may be driven by fictional narratives we collectively create and believe. His mind-bending and sometimes perplexing insights push us to reconsider how we live in this rapidly evolving, AI-augmented, transformative age.
As Harari argues, we are compelled to introspect, recognising that nearly all spheres of human personal and social systems worldwide are heavily influenced by unpredictable AI-driven technologies that could potentially undermine our existential purposes. Such alarming possibilities often force us to adopt these technologies blindly, rigidly, or habitually, shaping lifestyles disconnected from our authentic selves. This incongruence frequently steers us away from healthier and happier ways of living.
Meaningful Selves
The question that naturally follows is how to reclaim our authentic and meaningful selves. The key thinkers discussed in the preceding paragraphs offer pathways to address AI-driven existential crises. Socratic questioning uncovers the roots of unexamined beliefs, notions and narratives; enabling us to discern truth within the endless flow of unchecked AI-generated information and live authentically.
Kafka’s estranged characters emphasise the need for human connection to prevent alienation from self and meaning in growing online addiction to AI bots. Sartre’s existentialism guides us to live genuinely, embracing freedom and responsibility for our choices rather than passively following AI’s decisions. Camus’ ideas encourage philosophical revolt and liberty to find existential meaning, confronting the absurd in the tension between human purpose and AI’s non-human logic, which lacks consciousness and common sense.
These teachings guide us to adopt a flexible approach through self-awareness and critical thinking in response to AI-unleashed digital overload. Ultimately, it is incumbent upon us to accept the reality of AI’s uncertain, tech-driven role in our lives and use its tools, among other things, to strengthen ourselves, reclaiming freedom, agency, and meaning in our own contexts.
(The author, a recipient of National Rajbhasha Gaurav and De Nobili awards, is a former DGP in Madhya Pradesh)
