When the Machine Thinks, Man Feels

Just over a hundred years ago, there wasn't even a car. Not even electric light.

That's the speed of reason. Of invention. Of technology.

And the feelings?

Human feelings are approximately the same, even ten thousand years ago.

This introduction serves me to propose that reason has an endless curiosity, while emotions are essentially the same.

This proposition helps to predict where artificial intelligence may push us: (back) to our emotions. Right?

In Retirement of Reason I propose that AI will predominantly replace our rational side - literally the left side of the brain. Leaving room for the other side, the side connected to our feelings, sensations, emotions, to (return to) shine.

Daniel Siegel teaches us that both sides of the brain are important, which is why the thick corpus callosum connects both sides of the brain.

Through the synapses in the corpus callosum, emotions plus reason come into balance, obtaining from the whole the characteristics of complex systems: adaptability, flexibility (etc).

We could simplify that only the right side acting tends towards chaos, tantrums, tempers, those traffic fights that only afterwards the person regrets (etc).

We can also simplify that only the left side acting tends towards rigidity, with a distant coldness, lists and lists, analyses and analyses, without decision, without impulse.

If AI really replaces our need to use the left side, the side of reason, of the brain, can we become unbalanced?

That's a good question.

One hypothesis that appears to me is that we are already using the left side of the brain too much and the right side, of emotions, sensations, feelings, too little. Daniel Siegel himself advocates this in some of his books. Gelong Thubten, an English monk, also describes this, I feel.

If this hypothesis is correct, then AI will be helping to rebalance our complex machine of reason plus emotion.

I'm going to digress now about endless reason - and finite emotion.

I feel that our reason side never stops inventing things. That's why in just over a hundred years we have invented so much technology. Our emotions, however, remain the same: joy, sadness, fear, anger (etc).

We can invent various social arrangements to deal with these same emotions: arranged marriages, romantic love. Monogamy, polygamy (etc).

But these arrangements seek to deal with the same emotions, essentially.

If AI unbalances our ability to use both the left and right sides of the brain, leaning towards using the right side too much, replacing the use of the left side with AIs, we may tend towards chaos, from the point of view of complex systems analysis.

Tantrums, uncontrolled emotions and similar behaviors will no longer have so much the balance of reason.

Could we tend towards chaos?

And before AI, if we are really excessively rational, are we, then, before AI, tending towards rigidity, with excessive use of reason to the detriment of feelings and emotion?

In Brave New World, a tribe that does not submit to new technologies - like the Amish in the USA, approximately - would be a way to show that emotion does not need technology, I propose this interpretation. If we connect with our emotions and feelings, we could still be barefoot in the forest for another zillion years (until the sun goes out).

Already exploring our ability to rationalize, to invent technologies, there is never an end: we will always want to discover more planets and things smaller than the best microscope of the time shows us. Tirelessly.

I think I should start thinking about these issues, thinking a little about us, the world, with these tools and point of view of reason and emotion.

For now I just spread the tools on the table.

Inconclusive! Still.