AI and Human Development: How Not to Become a Hostage to Technology

AVAlexander Volchek

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 clarity of perception? Do we need to understand artificial intelligence? Do we need to understand technology if we do not work in that field? Can rejecting artificial intelligence really make you freer? In this video, I want to look in detail at how to approach AI from the standpoint of human development: why study modern technologies at all, and what matters if you are not to become their hostage? This is a serious topic.

If we look at the modern world, especially the past thirty years, we see incredible progress in technology—just staggering progress. It can seem that certain people are on the cutting edge and participating in that progress by understanding it. But if we really look, we can see how relative that knowledge is. Take even the current stage of artificial intelligence, what we call AI today: systems such as OpenAI's ChatGPT or Anthropic's Claude.

People did not foresee this. Anyone can say, “We foresaw it, we knew, we said so.” But in reality, people did not know or understand how it would actually function, how it would be introduced, or how it would affect the economy, politics, and laws. So when we use phrases such as “on the cutting edge,” or say that someone knows about something, it is important to look at what that person actually knows. I always suggest looking at it in the following way. First, though, I want to make a comment. There is a view that if someone uses ChatGPT or says something positive about artificial intelligence, they are supporting some bad world and bad energies.

For example, I have a channel called ToTheMoon, with technology news and insights from Silicon Valley and around the world. You might wonder why I run this channel at all. I speak there quite actively and passionately about how important it is for people in today's world to understand artificial intelligence. On one hand, you could see me as a geek who has decided to fill the whole world with technology. Or you could approach it from the other side, which I emphasize very strongly there: in today's world, people need a sound, adequate understanding and perception of what is actually happening. To perceive things, to understand health, the world's political system, economics, business, or the technological world, you have to study them.

Take spiritual science and the spiritual study of the world, for example. Rudolf Steiner placed enormous emphasis on how important it is for modern people—and notice that this was said a hundred, or even a hundred and twenty years ago—to study spiritual worlds. Not specifically in the sense of developing intuitive, inspirational, or imaginative perception, spiritual perception, or other senses, but in the sense of simply acquiring knowledge about how the world is organized, how it took shape, and its history. Acquiring it just as you would from a book. We sit with a book; at school, I was taught how World War I or World War II began, who ruled whom and where, and what the territories were.

At school, I studied the history of Belarus, for example, or world history. You are told things, given a whole body of information. Incidentally, you do not always know whether that information is real, reliable or unreliable. You simply take it in and then use that knowledge. You argue or debate with someone, tell someone about it, listen to tour guides who tell you things, and pass that information on. There is a huge, incredible amount of information, whether it is true or contradictory or not. In the same way, we learn about the spiritual world so that we can approach things from a different angle. Even when the first signs of imaginative or inspirational perception appear, or real intuition develops—what is called spiritual intuition, one of the highest forms of seeing the spiritual world—you need something to discuss, something to draw on.

We draw on something specific, don't we? I am in the south of France right now, sitting somewhere, and someone tells me, “This building, your hotel, was built in, say, 1860.” I have something to go on: “Oh, great. My hotel is in a historic building.” My mind has latched onto something. You can pay more for that, right? It is a piece of information. Or your hotel has a certain number of stars. Again, you have chosen something for yourself and have to pay something. Your hotel belongs to a certain chain, and so on. You rely on certain knowledge; you need it. You do not just arrive somewhere and hear, without any context, “A night here costs a hundred euros, here two hundred, here two thousand, here four thousand, here fifteen hundred, here five hundred.” They do not tell you that in the abstract. They give you a whole collection of information. When we talk about artificial intelligence or technology, it is very important to have knowledge so you can understand the difference.

If someone tells you there are one-, two-, three-, four-, and five-star hotels, you have some idea of what that means. If I talk about stars to my little six-year-old son, I certainly have not taught him that hotels have different star ratings, although he has obviously stayed in different hotels. He will not understand what it means. What difference does it make to him? He will simply choose whatever he likes, whatever seems fun, rather than based on an adequate perception of anything. He will not properly understand what is meant. He will just choose. That is important: he will just choose. Why? Because nobody has explained it to him, and he does not have that knowledge. If I tell my other son, who is a little older, ten years old, how do I explain the difference to him?

He will probably start remembering and asking questions. At some point, he will understand: this one costs more. Five stars costs more, so it is probably better. This one is cheaper, so it is probably not as good. That is roughly the association. In theory, you can give him that idea, but it will be hard for him to understand because he lacks a huge number of other factors that go into quality. The number of stars is very relative. A three-star hotel can cost more than a five-star hotel, and a five-star hotel might not be particularly good. His mind will probably struggle to digest and understand that. Why is that? “Dad, am I understanding this right? A four-star hotel can cost four times as much as a five-star hotel?”

Of course it can. To have five stars, for example, you need certain facilities. A hotel with four rooms, some exceptionally exclusive boutique hotel, simply cannot have all those facilities, so it may not have a certain star rating in that country. In another country, it might, because that country has different rules. So when people start trying to understand the modern world, artificial intelligence, and technology, they usually approach it like six-year-olds, not even ten-year-olds. I am not even talking about approaching it as an adult, because adults lack a basic understanding of an enormous number of subjects. Here, their ideas are very far removed from the reality. I have said this repeatedly, and I keep saying it: in their understanding of modern artificial intelligence, most people are ants. What does that mean?

They understand nothing. They have not come close to understanding, to any serious perception of it. Not even close, because they use most things very indirectly and very irresponsibly. Someone has simply told them which button to press, so they press that button. How does it work? What is actually happening? They do not know. Just as most people still do not really know that you cannot plug every appliance in the house into one outlet, that an outlet has a limit. There are appliances that, if you plug them in, can cause it to catch fire, blow a fuse, trip a breaker, or cause something else to happen. Or the appliance can break. People simply use everything automatically. Sometimes someone runs into problems—problems caused by not knowing.

Someone buys an electric mixer in America, takes it to Russia, plugs it into an outlet, and it dies immediately, instantly. Simply from not knowing. They either did not think or did not know. Again, we are looking at a very broad range of things today. They might seem very obvious, but they are actually far from simple in terms of perception. It is a broad range. The basic thing to understand is that it is impossible to be on the cutting edge of the technological world and artificial intelligence. Second, engaging with and using these things does not mean plunging into a dark world. It means making normal use of things that exist in the world today.

The question is: what is your attitude toward them? Why do you use them? Do you want to use artificial intelligence to harm another person? To profit at other people's expense? To hack someone, frame someone, or gain an advantage somewhere? Or do you use it in your ordinary life to live, learn about the world, do something more professionally, or work more efficiently? The choice is obvious. What is your intention? Whether you harm another person with AI or without it, you are still harming that person. Or you bring benefit, with AI or without it. This is an area where you need an adequate perception and a sound approach to your own life.

There is, of course, a basic account that is very important for our perception. Rudolf Steiner once wrote that if you open a safe, you are already supporting Ahrimanic energies. If you use a phone, you are already supporting particular energies of this world, and far from positive ones. Just as you support a huge number of negative energies when you simply take out a bank loan, for example, or make a loan. What that energy is, what kind of exchange it is—that is a big question. In exactly the same way, you use and support different energies when you shout at someone at home, eat certain foods, buy tickets to certain programs, watch certain videos, or listen to certain music.

There are many ways in which people create or support different energies. You support people who transmit a negative space and destroy people in the world. You do support them. You carry untruth within you. So this question of rejecting AI, for example, or getting more deeply involved with it—people already spend hours on their phones. Just open the screen-time information and see how much time they spend on their phones, how long they can go without a phone, or without being in contact with their loved ones. A friend was traveling with me in Spain, and we were together in France. He simply cannot go without calling a certain circle of people close to him. He cannot do it.

In our society, we think this is reasonable, but actually it is not. You are in a state of dependence, and that 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. I have often traveled to places with no phone service. You have no choice: you have to turn off your phone and make arrangements with everyone. Yet that is often so difficult. How important it is for a person to have a phone with them all the time. Now there are watches—even worse. They distract you endlessly. You are sitting with someone, eating, talking together, or just walking down the street, and their watch keeps showing messages. They keep receiving notifications about everything, without perceiving what is around them.

Any of those notifications can pull a person out of perception. They are things that take perception away, just as alcohol does, or certain light, certain sounds, or certain people. There are many things that take away a person's perception at a particular moment. Certain noise, too. These things take perception away. Can artificial intelligence take away a person's perception? Of course it can. Can today's artificial intelligence cause problems for humanity? It can. Just a few days ago, I think, I recorded an episode for ToTheMoon about something one of the employees said. Of course, these are just conversations in the technology world, but still.

Anthropic generally allows for a chance in the tens of percent—ten or twenty percent—that artificial intelligence will swallow up humanity within this decade. But these conversations reflect an entirely illusory perception of what is happening, just like the illusory perception that they control the process of creating artificial intelligence. First, if we look at the whole story with clear eyes, we can immediately see that they do not control anything. Their forecasts, discussions, details, fears, marketing statements are just a collection of remarks, endlessly mistaken remarks. They themselves keep writing that this could happen, or that, or something else. Then they say, “Oh, we were wrong here. Here we were off by a year, here by two, here by a year and a half. We did not see this; we did not know that.

“And in general, we want to create something better than a human being.” If it is better than a human being, how will you relate to it? Or do you think you will create something better than a human being that will work for you? That does not happen and never has. We all know what happens when something better than a human being has been created, especially when a human creates it. A person is always interested not merely in creating something better than themselves, but in creating something better that will work for them. Alongside that, this slogan is promoted as a positive one: artificial intelligence will be created to work for people. A positive slogan—for people. It is supposed to be better than a human being, but work for people. Of course, for a particular group of people. That is obvious, guaranteed. But does that group control this energy? Do they control it? To control it, you have to understand the source of all these energies, the source of artificial intelligence, of technology companies, of particular people. What is the source from the standpoint of the spiritual world?

Obviously, in the scientific, material sphere, there is no account of any such source. What is more, they themselves have problems with all these descriptions and details. They were living quite happily, talking about things, and now they complain that artificial intelligence is disrupting the scientific world and doing something wrong. Disrupting it, doing something wrong—really? Even today's simple systems are already far better than any scientist in the world. Fundamentally better than any scientist. Whatever test you run, it will be better. There may be particular, individual features where someone does better. That is natural if we have restricted the environment and turned off the lights. Obviously, a person will manage better in a room with the lights off than artificial intelligence, because at the moment, at least, artificial intelligence has to be connected to electricity.

But is that a victory? You would have to turn off the lights everywhere. We know plenty of films where exactly that happened. To prevent artificial intelligence from spreading, someone shut off the power around the world. Slaughter, wars, everyone ate or killed one another, nobody was left. A couple of people, a group of rescuers, try to save the world, gather books, avoid electricity, and restore everything. It is absurd, because they cannot actually control electricity either. They can make use of it and keep some process moving. So, of course, to learn about and move through today's world, to perceive it adequately—truly adequately—it is important, critically important, to study and expand your knowledge of artificial intelligence and technology.

And not just to understand it in the abstract, but to devote effort and time to it and recognize that it is a necessity in the modern world. Can you live without it? You can. That is obvious. In certain areas and fields, there are people who cannot and will not be able to live without it, given their location, where they are, their job, their professional activity. So people who are part of a large social environment, or live within a social environment in general, need to know these things. If it is an elderly woman living in a village who barely uses a phone except to call her children or relatives, she obviously has no need for it. That is another line, another chain of cause and effect. But we are not considering those cases. I simply suggest leaving those cases aside.

Take the ordinary internet or an ordinary computer as an example. How many people in the world know how to use a regular computer? Very few. Who can type quickly? Who can use Word or Excel well? Not that many people. If we take the billions of people in the world, not very many truly understand how any of it works. Not just registering an email account, logging in, pressing a couple of buttons, and getting something done. Usually, even the email account is set up by their children or other relatives. I mean understanding a little more than that. Think of how you used to have to install Windows. That was a whole procedure. If you still had to do that today, nobody would have computers or phones, because people would not want to set aside the time to really figure it out.

They do not want to—why bother with it? They want the end result, the final benefit for themselves. Would it have been useful for those people to learn at some point? Would it have been useful for my mother to learn how Word and Excel work twenty years ago, to become more literate with them? Of course. Obviously, she would have overcome a huge number of psychological inhibitions in her dealings with the social world. I want to point out that this is not only about computers, but about the social world as well. And she would have relieved the burden on the people around her. My God, how much time so many people have spent helping set up computers, phones, the internet, and dealing with problems and everything else. A lot has happened as a result, and she misses out on some things. This does not mean it is bad or good. Essentially, these are small actions an adult could have taken twenty years ago that would have helped them perceive the reality around them, the deceptions that can occur in the world, and the opportunities that exist.

Does a person need this or not? Each person chooses for themselves whether to receive this information, whether to know it. I have arrived here in some city, and I could get a guide and walk around with them. I do not get a guide because I do not want that information. I simply do not need it, this history of this particular city. I do not want it or need it. I do not need an hour and a half of information that makes me say, “Mmm, how wonderful, how interesting.” Of course it is interesting; history is interesting. But I cannot take in the whole history of the world. There are times when I simply want to spend an hour and a half listening to nothing, sitting and staring straight ahead, drinking water or coffee in some café, and doing nothing. My companion will also be looking straight ahead. It would be good if we really were not looking at our phones. Or we might discuss something, but not learn history, not learn the history of places, details, and everything else.

People have a choice about where to direct their attention, what to know and what not to know. I am not against history. Again, I devote quite a large part of my life to learning about different things. This is the important point I want this video to lead to: a person has the possibility of choice. They have a choice. They can want to enter this technological world not to become its hostage, but, on the contrary, to be free within it, to be ready to do without it. So that if their phone is stolen tomorrow or they lose their password, they do not cry and worry for four years afterward about what happened. To be energetically free of it. Or a person simply does not need it.