AI and automation: Are humans making their own brains redundant?

My late paternal aunt had a veritable calendar in her head: she never missed birthdays and anniversaries, and always called up relatives and friends on the right day. Most of us now tend to rely on our mobile phones or other electronic prompts, to do the same thing. Ditto for phone numbers. My aunt remembered dozens of them, if not hundreds, quite effortlessly. These days, most of us are hard-pressed to keep even a couple of them in mind besides our own.

Many no longer know how to read maps or tell the time from an "analog" clock. Mental currency calculations are also becoming redundant along with cash. No one remembers lists of things to buy; online shopping apps do it for them. Doctors depend on automated tests, not clinical examinations, for diagnosis. Students do assignments with ChatGPT. One day no one will know how to drive, so if autopilots conk out, they will have to walk. If they still remember how to.

Many do not know that we humans already have several redundant or vanishing body parts, from tails and appendixes to certain muscles and wisdom teeth. They languish uselessly inside us or even go missing entirely because the tasks they were needed for no longer exist. In some cases, we do not even know that they were meant for in the first place. Given the way technology is advancing, is it very hard to predict which part of the human body may atrophy next?


It was chilling to watch a reel recently about all the things that we once used our brains and limbs for that are now done by machines or not done at all. From remembering phone numbers and multiplication tables to many physical tasks. It seems humans believe our brains and bodies are meant for "higher" activities and willingly leave the "drudge work" to automation or artificial intelligence. What then are we evolved humans exclusively meant to do now? Think.

Scientists believe that humans came to dominate all other creatures on Earth because of our ability to think and collaborate in order to outflank species larger and more powerful than ourselves. Our advanced language and communication skills helped us survive and thrive in very adverse environments. So, our two brahmastras are thinking and talking. Yet humans are increasingly becoming loners, not wanting to interact in person. Talking is a dying virtue.

Newspapers, magazines, radio and TV cater to varied interests, offering a window to the world. There is a high chance of reading, hearing and watching something utterly new, thus widening horizons. But today, news and information mostly come on phones, with algorithms feeding existing interests and biases rather than offering diversity. How long will even thinking remain a prime human skill without the eclectic fodder needed to foster imagination and creativity?

If quotidian work will be done by machines eventually, we should enhance the skills that truly define us: mutual communication and original thinking. Yet many humans deliberately do not reach out to each other. We prefer to interact with our personal gadgets, and shadow-box online with strangers we will never physically see. In the space of a few decades, we humans are recklessly turning away from a 1,00,000-year-long habit of thinking, meeting and talking.

That it may soon be the turn of our brains also to wither away is no longer the stuff of bad sci-fi films. Already, unlike my aunt, we cannot remember phone numbers or addresses and readily delegate most tasks that need the active participation of our "leetle grey cells". No one is really sure what AI will and could do, so the human brains that created it may have started the process of their own redundancy. We need to seriously think and talk our way out of this one.