AI will do to our minds what machines did to our bodies
Just like we go to gyms today because machines have replaced strenuous physical work, in the near future, we’ll need to go to mental gyms to “work out” our minds because AI will do all the challenging mental work.
A thousand years ago, physical strength was just part of life. You built with your bare hands, carried heavy weights, sprinted in a hunt for meat.
Nobody needed to “work out” because survival already was the workout.
Then we invented machines and we outsourced most of our physical work to them. Nearly no one in the industrialized world does heavy physical work anymore.
Not only did we stop felling trees and carrying heavy logs with our bare hands, or running marathons chasing down food, but we wouldn’t even carry our own groceries (we use a cart instead), and we wouldn’t take the stairs to the next floor (we’ll rather use the elevator).
So, what did we do to fill our biological need for physical activity to stay healthy? We built gyms!
We invented the treadmill, the dumbbell, the pull-up bar, all so we could simulate the physical activities our bodies still desperately need.
Our ancestors would find this absolutely insane.
“You mean you carry heavy dumbbells with no purpose? You run on the same spot on a treadmill that’s going nowhere?”
I think AI is going to do the exact same thing to our minds.
We’ll outsource nearly every remotely challenging aspects of thinking to computers, so much that what is now basic mental effort will become rare in daily life.
There’ll be no need to remember things, reason through problems, or figure anything out, just like there is no need to hunt or lift heavy things in everyday life.
Eventually, we’ll build mental gyms.
Imagine going to a mental gym to simulate basic mental tasks and “work out” your mind: doing math, solving puzzles, learning biochemistry that you may never use, or a language that you may never speak, and doing all these only as exercise.