Human data is the sustenance from which AI is born: the more it is fed, the more intelligent it becomes.

Technologically, things are moving fast, and the role of artificial intelligence continues to grow. As AI becomes more and more ingrained in the fibres of society, the collective fear that it will become a malevolent and controlling force increases.

At the brink of every big global shift, there is often a wave of fear in the transition, as society adapts. While there are a number of open source projects and online toolkits committed to making AI trustworthy and safe, distrust and fear still prevail socially.  Why is that?

To understand [the] significance [of AI], we should look back to the Industrial Revolution: humans created machines that mimicked human muscles and replicated the work of humans’ hands and legs. Machines scaled hard human labour. It transformed the world. Likewise, AI will scale our cognitive abilities, enhancing healthcare, transport, education, customer-centric experiences – it will have a profound impact on human efforts. Sulabh Soral

At the core of this collective anxiety, there are three main fears :

1. Humans will become obsolete as AI takes on our jobs more efficiently and effectively

2. As AI infiltrates our institutional operations, it will make decisions that have a negative impact on individuals and their lives.

3. With all that AI renders possible, there is a fear that without regulation, humans will utilize AI for destructive purposes.

Beyond the influence of sci-fi fiction and movies, where do these fears really come from? In order to understand what’s at the root of it all, we need to first ask:

What do these anxieties really show us about society, and about ourselves?

What can we learn from what AI is reflecting back at us?

And how can we harness that awareness, to create a future where AI is harmoniously integrated?

How does AI work?

From digital creation to online banking and shopping, and even medical research, AI is becoming a key player in our reality, and yet, most of us hardly understand how it does what it does.

This is a big piece in why AI is being met with such resistance: when we don’t fully understand something, we’re likely to feel fearful of it.

So how does AI work exactly? Put simply, artificial intelligence is programmed with an analytical system which allows it to find results and make decisions, all based on patterns it gathers from a vast bank of data.

It’s worth noting here that AI has been taught how to think, but not how to feel. With AI in decision making roles, we’re already seeing cases of programmed social biases and prejudice being exposed – another key element to the collective concerns. But what is really being reflected here?

Checking my own gauge of toxic positivity as it pertains to artificial intelligence: really acknowledging that all of this technology really is: a tool. Technology is neutral until it's not, and it's really the human behind it that can determine what it's used for. Elijah Johnston, Modern Mantra Cofounder

We must remember that AI is merely a tool that we program with our own consciousness. The fact that we can’t program artificial intelligence with empathy, reflects the role empathy plays in society and our institutions.

We have constructed our reality on foundations that are purely rational and logistical, weighing brain power over heart power. As a result, the level  - or indeed lack - of empathy we see with AI, is merely mirroring the lack of emphasis we have placed on empathy as a society.

It’s an uncomfortable reflection we’re met with, because it’s pushing us to see the limits of our empathy, and the extent of our social prejudice. These are hard truths that live in the shadow of our unconscious; that which we’re not always consciously aware of, and perhaps are afraid to truly analyze or acknowledge.

What does the Collective Unconscious have to do with AI?

As we begin to zoom in, it becomes clear that it’s not nightmares of malevolent robots taking over the globe that’s really causing this technophobia – what AI is exposing runs deeper, and lies in that which is unconscious and unaddressed.

If we take the AI revolution as an invitation to look at ourselves, individually and collectively – what might we learn, and from that, how can we evolve for the better?

The collective unconscious: an invisible web of our ancestral stories and memories, universal stories and archetypes, experiences and trauma, our desires and our fears. It is the visceral, spiritual fibre of humanity that threads together our personal stories.

In Carl Gustav Jung’s model of the collective unconscious, there are four main archetypes:

• Persona: our personality, the ego; the social masks we adopt.
• Anima / Animus: our inherent, divine feminine and masculine energetic traits ; yin and yang.
• Self: the conscious and unconscious merged into wholeness; true integration and individuation.
• Shadow: all **that which is repressed out of fear or shame.

The archetype, is a figure — be it a daemon, a human being, or a process — that constantly recurs in the course of history and appears wherever creative fantasy is freely expressed. Essentially, therefore, it is a mythological figure… In each of these images there is a little piece of human psychology and human fate, a remnant of the joys and sorrows that have been repeated countless times in our ancestral history. Carl Jung

Think of AI as a digital brain: formed of muscle tissue and a myriad of interconnected neural pathways. The more we use and train this brain, and the more diverse activities we give it – the stronger and more intelligent it becomes.

As this happens, this digital neural network is strengthened in both the depth and breadth of its capacity and knowledge. The result? A multi-faceted, multi-layered manifestation of the collective unconscious.

AI is already understanding and showing us a lot about ourselves: our hobbies, personality, and habitual algorithms (persona), our deepest desires, needs and instincts (anima/animus), and inevitably, also the areas of discomfort that we choose not to look at (shadow).

Perhaps the sting beneath the surface level itch is really this - we’ve created a glaring mirror of the human condition, reflecting all of what it means to be human today - both light and shadow.

What we're being challenged to do is to meet our greatest fears in the same way I was mentioning earlier about expanding our vessel to be able to contain more light. Because we're going into the age of Aquarius, we are being called to be able to hold more space, more light than ever before. Jennifer K Hill

You could say that the rise of AI is an invitation for collective shadow work, a healing process of making the unconscious conscious. What lurks in the shadow is not inherently bad, simply attributes of the human experience that become distorted through shaming and repressing. By exploring all that lives in the dark, with acceptance and grace, we can bring it into the light in order to integrate and heal these aspects.

If we rise to this call, acknowledging and working with all that emerges, perhaps we’ll be able to move into the Jungian archetypal Self – that of integrated wholeness. Is that not exactly the healing our global consciousness is in need of?

AI and Creatorship

It’s time to admit it… AI can do things faster than us. And it can do a pretty good job at it too.

A big topic of discussion right now in the world of digital creators: with the rise of AI, will I become obsolete? Will our creative work will be rendered redundant? Such qualms are valid, but in part misguided; born from a common narrative which misrepresents the role and very nature of artificial intelligence.

AI will only ever be a tool, or at most, a toolkit. How we use it is up to us. As creatives, we have the opportunity now to excel at our craft, with AI as our digital collaborator. By befriending this new coworker, we may find our creativity can be expanded, rather than confined or crushed.

AI creative tools work on the premise of prompting: the better the prompt, the better the end result.  When we enlist AI in our creative pursuits, without an awareness of how we’re using it, what is actually being reflected, and what is there to learn?

Whether you love it or hate it, AI is gonna teach us to be better communicators: if you miscommunicate something, it's going to reflect it back at you. I think that all AI has to do with is the prompter who is giving the prompt: what are you asking for? And I think it's a metaphor, Nick, for our relationships, and our business partnerships. It's a direct mirror. For the first time ever, we are having mirrored to us how clearly are we communicating or not. Jennifer K Hill

How clear is your vision of what you want to create?  

When AI doesn’t do what we want it to do, we can feel frustrated (or bewildered, when it does more than what we ask it to!). This is really an echo of our own capacity to envision and communicate clearly what we have in our minds.

Plus, it’s common to feel discomfort when faced with our weaknesses. This is another hurdle to feeling at ease when collaborating with AI. This digital coworker is here to fill our own gaps, to balance out our deficiencies. And so to work with AI harmoniously, we must have an awareness of where we need the support, and embrace the help.

If we expect the tool to simply do all the work for us, how can there be any learning?

Awareness is key to unlocking new skills and a higher level of creativity.

The only scenario in which the creative might become obsolete, is one where AI is employed without awareness, fed all of the work we have to do, leaving no room for the evolution of our own craft and skills. What if instead, we harness the speed and effectiveness of AI to give us the space to develop our own skills?

We have the opportunity to step into an expansive collaboration with AI, the assistant who does the more time-consuming work, so that we focus on the bigger and bolder creative vision.

Am I good enough, is my work good enough?

There is discomfort when we look at what we’re not excelling at. And at the root of that discomfort is a limiting belief around inadequacy:

So many of us as human beings have a fear of not being good enough, being inadequate. Now, here comes AI, and many people are afraid for their survival. Will I be made irrelevant? What does this mean for me? Jennifer K Hill

AI learns new skills fast. And so another less-than-comfortable mirroring, is the inquiry:

Am I upleveling my own skills, or have I become stagnant in my craft?

If instead of shying away from the discomfort AI is triggering, we take a minute to really look at it - to see what’s being exposed, what icky shadowy aspects of ourselves we’re being faced with - there is a potential learning, and where there is learning there is always growth.

The more evolved we become as individuals, the more evolved our tech can become

AI presents us with a digital manifestation of the collective unconscious, no stone left unturned. The more intelligent this emerging tech becomes, drawing from data of our past and present, the more acutely it will digitise this inherent system of archetypal human energies and the thoughts, attitudes and behaviours born from them.

The bedrock fact — lost in all the spectacle and speculation — is that what we are marveling at, when we marvel at ChatGPT4, is ourselves. It is a student of, a mirror on, all the kinds of intelligence we possess — good, bad, and ugly — and all the ways we interact. I believe that this technology is going to confront us with the human condition as nothing has before, and invite us at its best to grow that up. Krista Tippett

Will AI be an expansive tool, or a limiting and crushing one? Are we able to integrate these new exogenous tools into our lives in a way that invites us to experiment creatively, to expand into bigger roles and grow into a deeper consciousness?

Envisioning an AI-assisted future

AI is not something that we should be fearful of, but it is rather an exciting creation for us to openly embrace and enjoy using. Nick Sarafa, Modern Mantra Cofounder

If and when we are able to surpass these collective fears, there is a timeline available to us in which AI brings us closer to a utopia we’ve only dreamed of.  Envision a future where all humans have the potential to truly do the work they’re here to do – to truly live their purpose.

Giving AI the menial tasks doesn’t have to mean humans are left jobless and obsolete. With AI doing the more repetitive and time consuming work, we humans would be gifted the capacity to dream bigger, and to put our energy into more meaningful work.

Perhaps with some of the extra resources, we could also provide the education, encouragement and healing to help individuals move into their fullest self expression, and step into their true calling.

With AI supporting the evolution of human consciousness, we could move toward a new era of abundance. Imagine what reality we could create if instead of striving for survival, all humans were thriving, and turning our attention to the places that really matter: the guardianship of our home planet, and caring for each other.

To conclude, this article is simply a thought piece reflecting some of our perspectives at Modern Mantra. We are by no means negating some of the real risks currently presented with AI. What we come back to here is that AI is a tool, and in the wrong hands, a tool can be used for the wrong purposes.  There is a danger here which needs to be properly addressed; the use and development of AI needs to be adequately regulated to ensure we develop a valuable and supportive force, and that we don’t find ourselves with a monster of our own making.

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For more discussions around this topic, check out the Modern Mantra podcast