Being Human in the Age of Intelligent Machines - Ep. 54 with Dr. Alan Lightman

AI forces us to reckon with what makes us human—a question caught between science and spirituality that MIT’s Dr. Alan Lightman is uniquely placed to explore.

Dr. Lightman is a physicist, bestselling novelist, and professor of the practice of humanities at MIT. As one of the first at MIT to hold a joint faculty position in both the sciences and the humanities, he’s at ease walking the line between the two disciplines.

I loved Dr. Lightman’s book Einstein’s Dreams, so I was psyched to have him on the show. We spent an hour talking about:

• Being a “spiritual materialist”: Dr. Lightman’s philosophy that knowing the scientific explanation for natural phenomena—like spiderwebs and lightning bolts—deepens our experience and feeling of wonder.
• The nature of consciousness: He believes that consciousness is a subjective experience emerging from the tangible activity of billions of neurons firing in our brains.
• AI isn’t conscious, even though it might appear to be: AI might display manifestations of consciousness—like the ability to plan for the future—but whether it has an inner experience in the truest sense is a fundamentally different question.
• Challenge your conceptions of what “natural” means: Dr. Lightman argues that since humans evolved through natural selection, everything our brains create—from eyeglasses and hearing aids to AI—can be considered “natural” as they are inevitable consequences of our naturally evolved intelligence
• AI that can do more than just data retrieval: Modern neural networks begin to approximate something resembling genuine thinking because the “digital neurons” process information in complex, non-linear ways.
• Evolution that blurs the lines between biology and technology: Dr. Lightman argues we’re driving our own evolution toward the “homo techno,” hybrid beings that merge human and machine; early examples include brain implants that enable paralyzed individuals to control robotic limbs.

Dr. Lightman also recently published a new book called The Miraculous From the Material, a collection of essays that combine scientific explanations of natural phenomena with his personal reflections on them. It has tons of striking pictures that you should check out.

This is a must watch for anyone interested in science, spirituality, and what it means to be human in the age of AI. 

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Timestamps:

1. Introduction: 00:01:18
2. Science can deepen your sense of the spiritual: 00:02:36
3. The nature of consciousness: 00:11:31
4. AI might appear to be conscious, but it isn’t: 00:13:11
5. Why AI can be considered to be “natural”: 00:19:50
6. AI shifts the focus of science from explanations to predictions: 00:30:40
7. How modern neural networks simulate thinking: 00:33:48
8. Lightman’s vision for how humans and machines will merge: 00:39:38 
9. Does AI know more about love than you?: 00:43:11
10. How technology is accelerating the pace of our lives: 00:49:18

Links to resources mentioned in the episode:

• Alan Lightman: https://cmsw.mit.edu/alan-lightman/ 
• Lightman’s books: The Miraculous From the Material, Einstein's Dreams
• His documentary: Searching: Our Quest for Meaning in the Age of Science

Walt Whitman’s poem: When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer