AI and Human Development: How Not to Be Technology’s Hostage

Artificial intelligence is becoming an ever deeper part of our lives. But what does that mean for human development, and can we preserve our freedom simply by rejecting technology?

In this video, I look at why people today need to understand the world they live in, and how technological and spiritual development are connected. I talk about how technology and notifications take our attention, why not knowing can create even greater dependence, and whether we need to understand artificial intelligence — not in order to become its hostage, but to keep the ability to choose.

How to look at the development of technology

Today, artificial intelligence is becoming part of ordinary life; we all understand that. But what does it mean for a person’s real development? Do technologies interfere with spiritual development — or, on the contrary, does a person need to understand the world they live in to preserve their freedom and the clarity of their perception? Do we need to understand artificial intelligence? Do we need to understand technology if we don’t work in that field? Can rejecting artificial intelligence really make you freer?

I want to look in great detail at how to relate to artificial intelligence from the standpoint of human development, why study modern technologies at all, and what matters if you are not to become their hostage. A serious topic.

The thing is, in the modern world, especially if you look at the past thirty years, we see incredible, simply staggering progress in technology. And it can seem that certain people are on the cutting edge and take part in this progress in the sense of knowing it. But if you really look, you can see that this knowledge is very relative. Take even the current stage of artificial intelligence — of what is called by that word today: systems such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Anthropic’s Claude.

People didn’t foresee this. Anyone can say, “We foresaw it, we knew, we said so.” But in reality people didn’t know or understand how it would actually function and be introduced — how it happens, how it affects the economy, politics, laws. So when we use phrases like “someone is on the cutting edge” or “someone has knowledge of something,” it is important to look at what knowledge a person really has. And I always suggest you look at it in the following way.

AI = dark energies?

But first I want to make a comment. There is a view that if a person uses ChatGPT or says something good about artificial intelligence, they are supporting some bad world and supporting bad energies.

For example, I have a channel called ToTheMoon — technology news and insights from Silicon Valley and around the world. And a question may arise: why do I run this channel at all? After all, I talk there quite actively, passionately, about how important it is for a person in today’s world to understand artificial intelligence. On the one hand, you can see it as me being a geek who decided to technologize the whole world. Or you can approach it from the other side, which I convey very strongly there.

In today’s world, it is important for a person to have normal, adequate knowledge and perception of what is actually happening. And to understand health, the world’s political system, the economy, business or the technological world, you have to study them.

Why study the spiritual world

It’s the same, for example, in spiritual science, in the spiritual study of the world. Rudolf Steiner places enormous emphasis on how important it is for the modern person — note that this was said a hundred, even a hundred and twenty years ago — to study the spiritual worlds. In particular, not in the sense that you must develop intuitive, inspirational and imaginative perception, spiritual perception, develop other sense organs, but in the sense of simply gaining knowledge about how the world is arranged, how it took shape, what its history is. Gaining it just as you would from a book. We sit with a book — at school I was told how World War I and World War II began, who ruled where, what the territories were.

At school I studied the history of Belarus and world history. You are told things, given a whole layer of information. Incidentally, you don’t always know whether this information is real or not, reliable or unreliable — you simply consume it and then use this knowledge. You argue with someone, debate, tell someone about it, listen to guides, they tell you things, you pass it on, and so on. A huge, incredible amount of all kinds of information. It doesn’t matter whether it is true, contradictory or not.

In the same way, knowledge of the spiritual world is studied here. You need to study the knowledge of the spiritual world in order to be able to approach things from another side at all. Even when the first signs of perception through imagination or inspiration appear, or real intuition develops — what is called spiritual intuition, one of the highest forms of seeing the spiritual world — you need it in order to be able to discuss anything at all, to have something to rely on.

After all, we rely on something specific. Right now I’m in France, in the south of France. And I’m told, “This building, your hotel, was built in 1860.” I have something to lean on: “Oh, great, my hotel is in a historic building.” My mind has leaned on something and latched onto it. You can pay more for that. Or: your hotel has so many stars. Again you have chosen something for yourself; you need to pay for something. Your hotel belongs to such-and-such a chain, and so on. You rely on some knowledge; you need it.

You didn’t just check in somewhere in the abstract, and nobody tells you in the abstract: here a night costs a hundred euros, here two hundred, here two thousand, here four thousand, here fifteen hundred, here five hundred. You are given a whole set of different knowledge; it is built up for you. And when we talk about artificial intelligence or technology, it is very important to have knowledge in order to understand the difference.

You are told that there are one-, two-, three-, four- and five-star hotels, and you have some idea of what is meant by that. But if you talk about stars to my little six-year-old son — I certainly haven’t taught him that there are hotels with different numbers of stars, although of course he has stayed in different hotels — he won’t understand what it is. What difference does it make to him? He’ll simply choose what he likes, for fun, not on the basis of an adequate perception of anything. He won’t adequately perceive what is meant. He’ll just choose. This is very important: he’ll just choose. Why? Because nobody explained it to him, and he doesn’t have this knowledge.

And how do you explain the difference to my second son, who is a bit older — he’s ten? He’ll probably start remembering, he’ll ask again, and at some point he’ll understand: this one is more expensive. Five stars is more expensive, so it’s probably better. And this one is cheaper — probably not better. Roughly that kind of association. In theory you can put this into his head, but it will be hard for him to grasp, because he lacks a huge number of other parameters that quality is then made up of.

Because the number of stars is a very relative thing. A three-star hotel can cost more than a five-star one, and a five-star hotel may not be all that good. And his mind is unlikely to be able to digest and understand it: “But why? Dad, do I understand correctly that a hotel with four stars can cost four times more than one with five?” Of course it can. Because to have five stars, you need, for example, certain infrastructure. A hotel with four rooms, some super-boutique, simply can’t have that super-infrastructure, so in this country, for example, it doesn’t have a certain star rating. In another country it might, because the rules of the game are different there.

When people in today’s world start to figure out artificial intelligence and technology, they usually approach it like six-year-olds — not even ten-year-olds.

I’m not even talking about approaching it as an adult: adults already lack a basic understanding of a huge number of subjects, and here their ideas are very far off. I have said many times, I have repeated and I keep repeating that most people, in their understanding of modern artificial intelligence, are ants. What does that mean?

They understand nothing; they haven’t come close to a serious understanding, a serious perception. Not even close, because they use most things very indirectly and very irresponsibly. Someone simply told them which button to press — and they press that button. How is it arranged? What is actually happening there? They don’t know.

Just as most people still don’t really know that you can’t plug every appliance at home into a socket. That a socket has its limits. There are appliances that, if you plug them in, can make the socket catch fire, blow a fuse, trip the breaker, cause something else to happen, or the appliance breaks. People simply use everything automatically. And sometimes someone runs into problems — problems from not knowing. A person bought an electric mixer in America, came to Russia, plugged it into a socket — and the mixer died at once, instantly. Simply from not knowing. Either he didn’t think, or he didn’t know.

Does using AI make you part of a “dark” technological world

Once again: today we are looking at a very wide range of things. It all seems very banal, but in fact it is far from simple in terms of perception. The basic thing to understand is that it is impossible to be on the cutting edge of the technological world and artificial intelligence.

The question is: what is your attitude to it? Why do you use it? Do you want to use artificial intelligence to harm another person? To profit at other people’s expense? To hack someone, frame someone, win somewhere? Or do you use it in your ordinary life — to live, to learn about the world, to do something more professionally, to work more efficiently? The choice is obvious. What is your intention?

With artificial intelligence or without it, if you harm another person, you are harming them all the same. Or you bring benefit — with artificial intelligence or without it. This is a matter in which you need to be in an adequate perception and in an adequate life of your own.

There is, of course, a basic description that is very important for perception. Rudolf Steiner once wrote that if you open a safe, you are already supporting Ahrimanic energies. That is, if you use a phone, you are already supporting the specific energies of this world, and far from positive ones. Just as you support an enormous amount of negative energy when you simply take out a loan at a bank or give a loan. What this energy is and what this exchange is — that is a big question.

In exactly the same way, you use and support different energies when you shout at someone at home, when you eat certain foods, buy tickets to certain programs, watch certain videos, listen to certain music. There is a great deal in which a person creates or supports different energies. Supports people who transmit a negative space and destroy people in the world. You support them. You carry untruth within you.

When technology becomes dependence

Hence this whole question: to reject artificial intelligence, for example, or to immerse yourself in it more. And people today sit on their phones for hours. It’s enough to open the screen time and see how much time they spend on their phones, how long they can go without a phone at all, how long they can go without being in touch with their loved ones.

A friend was with me — we were traveling together, in Spain, in France — and he can’t go without calling a certain circle of people close to him. He simply can’t. In society it seems to us that this is reasonable, but actually it isn’t. You are in a state of dependence. And this dependence is carried through the phone: if there were no contact, no means of communication, he would have the opportunity to be alone. He would have no choice.

Many times in my life I have traveled to places where there was no phone signal. You have no choice: you have to switch off your phone and make arrangements with everyone. But how hard that often is to do. How important it is for a person to have their phone with them all the time. Now watches have appeared — even worse. They distract you endlessly. You sit with someone, eat, talk, simply walk down the street, and their watch endlessly shows various messages, and the person endlessly receives notifications about everything without perceiving what is around them.

Any notification can pull a person out of perception. In essence, these are things that take perception away — just like alcohol, a certain light, a certain sound or certain people.

There are many things that take a person’s perception away at a particular moment. Or a certain noise. These are things that take away a person’s perception.

Can AI narrow perception

Can artificial intelligence take away a person’s perception? Of course it can. Can today’s artificial intelligence lead to humanity having problems? It can. Just a few days ago, I think, I recorded an episode on the ToTheMoon channel about how Anthropic generally allows for a probability in the tens of percent — ten or twenty percent — that within this decade artificial intelligence will swallow up humanity. Of course, these are just conversations in the technology world, but still.

But these conversations are an entirely illusory perception of everything that is happening, just as illusory as the perception that they control the process of creating artificial intelligence. If you look at the whole story adequately, you can immediately see that they control nothing. Their forecasts, discussions, details, some fears, marketing statements — it’s just a set of endlessly mistaken statements, where they themselves keep writing that this could happen, and that, and that. And then they say, “Oops, here we were wrong, here we were off by a year, here by two, here by a year and a half. We didn’t see this, we didn’t know that. And in general, we want to create something better than a human being.”

If it is better than a human being, then how will you be connected to it? Or do you think you will create something better than a human being and it will work for you? That doesn’t happen and never has. We all know what happens if something better than a human being has been created, especially if a human being creates it. A person is always interested not merely in creating something better than themselves, but in having it work for them.

And in parallel a positive slogan is moving forward: an artificial intelligence will be made that will work for people. A positive slogan — for people. It should be better than a human being, but work for people. For a certain group of people, of course — that is obvious, guaranteed. But does this group of people control this energy? Do they control it? After all, to control it, you have to figure out what the source of all these energies is, what the source of artificial intelligence is, of technology companies, of certain people. What is the source from the standpoint of the spiritual world?

Obviously, in the scientific, material environment there is no description of any source. What’s more, they themselves have problems with all these descriptions, all these details. They lived and lived without a care, talked about this and that, and now they complain that artificial intelligence, you see, is disrupting the scientific world and doing something wrong. But it isn’t disrupting anything and isn’t doing anything wrong. Even today’s simple systems are already far better than any scientist in the world. Fundamentally better than any scientist in the world. Whatever test you run, it will be better.

Some individual features are better — well, that’s natural if we have restricted a certain environment and turned off the lights. Obviously, a person will find their way better in a room with the lights off than artificial intelligence, because at the moment artificial intelligence at least has to be connected to electricity.

But is that a win? Then you’ll have to turn off the lights everywhere. And you and I know a huge number of films in which exactly that happened. To prevent the spread of artificial intelligence, someone turned off the lights all over the world. Slaughter, wars, everyone ate and killed each other, no one was left. And a couple of people, a group of rescuers, try to save the world: gather books, not use electricity and restore everything. That’s absurd, because they can’t control electricity either. In fact. They can use it somehow and move some process along.

How to choose where to direct your attention

Can you live without it? You can, that’s obvious. In certain planes, certain areas, there are people who won’t be able to live without it — given their location, where they are, their work, their professional activity. So people who are in a large social environment, or who generally live in a social environment, of course need to know this. If it’s a grandmother who lives in a village and uses her phone only to call her children or relatives, then of course she has no need for it. That is a different line, a different chain of cause and effect. I simply suggest leaving such cases aside.

Take the ordinary internet or an ordinary computer as an example. How many people in the world know how to use an ordinary computer? Very few. Who can type fast? Who can use Word or Excel well? Not that many people. If you take the billions of people in the world, not that many of them truly understand how it works at all. Not just registering an email account, logging in, pressing two buttons — usually the email is set up by children or some relatives anyway — but understanding at least a little more about it.

In the past, for example, you had to install Windows — that was a whole procedure. If you had to do that now, nobody would have computers or phones, because people wouldn’t want to set aside the time to really figure it out. They don’t want to deal with it — why would they? They want to get the end effect, the final benefit for themselves.

Would it have been useful for these people to figure it out at some point? Would it have been useful for my mother, twenty years ago, to figure out how Word and Excel work, to become more literate? Of course it would. Obviously, she would have removed a huge number of psychological blocks in her dealings with the social world — and I want to say, by the way, not only with the computer, but with the social world as well. And taken a load off the people around her. My God, how much time a huge number of people have spent helping to set up computers, phones, the internet, with problems and everything else.

A lot has happened, and she misses out on some things. That doesn’t mean it is bad or good. But essentially these are small actions that an adult could have taken twenty years ago, and they would have had a certain plus in perceiving the reality that is happening, the deceptions that can happen around them in the world, and the opportunities that exist.

Whether a person needs this or not — everyone chooses for themselves. Do they need to receive this information or not, do they need to know it or not. I’ve come here, to some city, and I could hire a guide and walk around with them. I don’t hire a guide because I don’t want to receive this information. I simply don’t need it — I don’t need the history of this particular city. I don’t want it, I don’t need it. I don’t need an hour and a half of certain information that will make me go, “Mmm, how cool, how interesting.” Of course it is interesting; history is interesting. But I can’t take the whole history of the world into myself.

And there are moments when I just want to listen to nothing for an hour and a half, sit, stare blankly ahead, drink water or coffee in some café and do nothing. And my friend will also be looking ahead — it’s good if we really aren’t looking at our phones while we do. Or to discuss something, but not to learn the history of the sights, the details and everything else.

A person has a choice of where to direct their attention, what to know and what not to know.

I’m not against history. Once again: I set aside quite a large part of my life for learning about various things. And this is exactly the important point I want to lead to: a person has the possibility of choice; they have a choice.

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