Artificial Intelligence Needs A Heart #8

A few weeks ago, I went to a café with a friend to have lunch. Sitting in a booth, we noticed what looked like a family – a Mom, a Dad, and a teenage boy and girl. All four were studying their smartphones, looking grim and even worried.

I looked at my friend across the table, nodded my head toward the family, and said, “Ah, there’s AI at work.” He said, “Yeah, and here’s another example: I attended a divisional meeting at our company’s office this week, and about a dozen of us were asked to have our laptops with us. That was okay, as we needed to discuss the contents, but after we finished, I folded my computer and started making the rounds and talking to the different attendees. I was the only one who seemed interested in the others we had worked with over long distances for years. Again, AI at work.” We agreed that AI would turn us all into robots if we were not careful.

I hear that AI may be endangering our very culture and perhaps our very existence. I believe that the real danger is that we will become an even more right-brained bunch of rigid non-feeling, very technical boobs. When I was ten years old, I was fascinated, horrified, and curious about the newsreels showing thousands of German soldiers robotically marching and saluting Hitler. I was horrified because I wondered if someday, I might be forced to stand there and begin marching like I had a cob up my butt, saluting some pompous jackass in some medal-bedecked uniform.

I told my companion, “I think we need to get people to open their minds and hearts and connect to one another as human beings. He nodded and asked, "How could that happen?"

I responded, “Have you ever heard of Martin Buber?” He shook his head no, and I said, “I’ll tell you about him. I’ve told this story hundreds of times in my classes and sessions with counseling Interns. Martin was a young professor at a university in Germany in the early years of the last century, and one of his duties was to counsel students. One day, a very sad and depressed student came to his office. Buber counseled him for about an hour. The young man left looking just as sad as when he arrived. About two hours later, another student ran into Martin’s office and told him that the lad had hung himself.”

Of course, Martin was horrified by the news and began scrutinizing the hour he had spent with the young man. After several days of going over and over the time with the fellow, he decided that he had "technically" been a good counselor; he was kind and patient, had not asked too many questions, and had done a good job. But he kept worrying about what he could have done differently that might have helped the fellow. Then it dawned on him – he had stayed in the role of professor and counselor and left the fellow in the role of student and counselee. It was an "I-It" relationship, not a person-to-person meeting.

Buber called it an "I–Thou relationship.” He may have helped the student if he had just been himself – Martin and encouraged the lad to be himself. Instead, he had been a person carrying out a role. Carl Rogers, the renowned psychologist, learned from Buber and wrote several books on this concept. His most famous work is On Becoming a Person.” 

I recently went to see a physician who seemed quite friendly and kind. Still, after a few meetings, I realized that he was treating me just like an "it” – as one of his assigned patients. Not a living, breathing individual with my own mind, giftedness, weaknesses, etc. I am not “an it.”

Please Google Martin Buber’s I-Thou concept.

Nurture your heart, and don’t eat the menu.