“Got to start by finding it, have we? Not allowed to start by looking for it, I suppose?“
The above words, spoken by Puddleglum the Marshwiggle in CS Lewis’s The Silver Chair*, always resonate strongly with me. They are especially meaningful in these days of artificial intelligence (AI), where it seems every question can be answered at the touch of a button, every information need satisfied instantly by our robot overlords (I jest – maybe). I realise I am in the minority when I say I have never used AI and have no plans to start doing so, for reasons too complex to go into here but which touch upon creative theft, the outsourcing of our ability to think, and the overloading of our planetary resources. However, this is not intended to be a rant**, merely some musings on what this efficiency of question-answering might herald for us as a sapient species.
As a former librarian, I remember a similar issue arising with the advent of Google: why approach a real person, when you could simply type your question into a search box and have a list of possible answers instantly displayed on your screen? In itself this is not necessarily a problem: new technologies are part of the history of humanity, and librarians have always been at the forefront of engaging with these inventions (from stone tablets to the printing press to the internet), to connect people with the information they need to live their lives. However, AI takes the quest for answers to new extremes: it purports to give you a definitive response to your question, so that you are not even encouraged to sift through a range of solutions and apply your own judgement, but to simply accept what is delivered to you.
I find this increasing habituation to expect immediate answers worrying: the idea that everything can quickly and easily be explained, rather than allowing questions to percolate, letting nuances simmer, wondering whether the question you’re asking is even the one you really want to ask. Fine if you want to know ‘what is the capital of Denmark?’ (assuming AI gets it right – and if it doesn’t, how would you know?). Less fine if you’re asking about something more complex: ‘why is my partner leaving me?’, ‘what is my purpose in life?’, ‘is there a God?’ Can these things really be reduced to a snippy paragraph on a mobile phone screen? And even if they can, is that really something we want to place our trust in?
I recently read the final instalment in Philip Pullman’s ‘The Book of Dust’ trilogy, The Rose Field*. The overarching message I took from this book (and with which I agree) is that it is vitally important to have things in life that we can’t explain: to be open to wonder, curiosity, and an ability to welcome the unknown rather than regard it as a problem to be solved. I doubt anyone would deny that science has brought many helpful developments: knowing how parts of the universe function, from our own bodies to the movement of the planets, has enabled us to progress in ways we would never have thought possible, and saved countless lives. However, the point of science, surely, is that we cannot and do not know everything: current ‘evidence’ is merely the sum total of what we know so far, and the scientific method itself depends on continually having questions to ask. The true scientist, in my view, does not believe that we will ever reach a point where we can declare we know everything. There will always be more to discover – and perhaps some things are never meant to be discovered. If we accede to the insidious persuasion of AI that it can provide a definitive answer to everything, where does that leave our scientific breakthroughs? Our desire to question is what makes us human, what motivates us as a species, and what drives our greatest developments. Asking AI for speedy answers acclimatises us to imagine that coming up with solutions should be easy when, for the most important questions, that is far from being the case.
One of my responsibilities as a librarian was to teach people not only how to find information, but also how to evaluate it. Yes, we want answers, but they need to be the right ones; and to ensure this we need to keep hold of our own sense of self – what holds true for each of us, individually, in the world – and not be swayed by fashionable fads, theories or manifestos, no matter how beguiling they may seem or how loudly they are shouted. Despots and cult leaders thrive when they can convince people that the world is a confusing place and they alone hold the key to surviving it; and that ‘key’ is often presented as a definitive (usually biased) answer to the most perplexing question of all: how we deal with uncertainty. Uncertainty is uncomfortable to experience, and we all instinctively look for ways to reduce or eliminate it – and yet uncertainty is baked into life, and we can never expect to be free of it. To imagine otherwise is unrealistic.
Life is not black and white; it is composed of a multiciplicity of shades and tones, and we can only be the richer for inviting these differences in. Some questions may have simple answers, but if we allow ourselves to believe that every question has a simple answer, we are depriving ourselves of the experience of figuring things out for ourselves; we are outsourcing our ability to relate to each other as humans; and we are distancing ourselves from the glorious, unpredictable world in which we live, in an attempt to reach a finite endpoint that will never, ever come. Because life, by its very nature, is constantly changing, and the more we try to run away from this fact, the more we alienate ourselves from the fabulously messy, but vital, life we could have.
Embrace the chaos. Ask questions. Challenge the answers.
*Disclosure: If you buy books through these links, I may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops.
**Oops. I lied.