Nothing symbolizes our anti-human times more than the fear of artificial intelligence. AI is expected to take our jobs, dominate the world, and redefine what it means to be human. Flesh and blood humans are predicted to eventually take a secondary role in our own history. This pervasive atmosphere of misanthropy makes the publication of Atomic Man: Understanding Ourselves in the Age of AI by Neil D. Lawrence timely and relevant.
Lawrence, currently the DeepMind Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Cambridge and previously the Director of Machine Learning at Amazon, is uniquely positioned to explore the practical and existential implications of AI. Atomic Human explores the fundamental question of what it means to be human in an era when AI is capable of performing tasks once thought to be the sole domain of human intelligence.
The book's central argument revolves around the notion of “atomic man,” a metaphor inspired by the atomic theory of the ancient Greek philosopher Democritus, who posited that matter cannot be divided infinitely, but will eventually arrive at indivisible “atoms.” Lawrence similarly argues that AI's ability to replicate aspects of human intelligence will reveal an indivisible core of humanity. This core, Lawrence suggests, is characterized by human fragility and limitations.
Atomic Human is intriguing and engaging, with a wealth of analogies and examples drawn from history. Lawrence is a recognized champion of the uniqueness and beauty of human intelligence. He correctly suggests that machine intelligence can be a useful adjunct to human intelligence, provided we understand and control machine power. In his words, these tools serve as a complement to human decision-making and problem-solving. In other words, Lawrence seeks to champion human agency. Humans, he argues, are agents of change, not objects.
But the book's claim that human intelligence is defined primarily by its limitations, not its capabilities, is problematic and reflects a widespread decline in the view of humanity in the 21st century.
Laurence uses the example of Jean-Dominique Bauby's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly to illustrate human limitations. A former editor at Elle magazine, Bauby suffered a severe stroke that left him completely paralyzed except for his left eyelid. He was mentally sane but trapped inside his own body. However, he was able to write his memoirs by blinking and selecting individual letters. The diving suit represented this sense of being restricted, while the butterfly represented the freedom of his inner thoughts and memories.
It is this “locked-in” syndrome that Lawrence uses to characterize the human condition. Our intelligence, he says, is also severely limited in our ability to communicate. In this sense, we are all butterflies in diving suits, especially when compared to the speed at which the machines we have created can exchange information (tens of millions of times faster than humans can).
For Lawrence, this is crucial to understanding the nature of human intelligence. Machines can already replace humans in physical jobs—think combines, mechanical looms, and the robots that make cars. AI can now replace humans in mental jobs as well. As Lawrence says, AI's “ability to consume and process information makes the printing press, so essential to our progress, a laughable anachronism.”
Curiously, however, Lawrence does not address the obvious counterargument that by creating AI, humanity is beginning to solve the problem of limited bandwidth. In fact, the way we compensate for our “locked-in” nature is precisely what makes us human. We are constantly overcoming biological constraints. Humans can fly not because they have wings, but because they build machines to do things they cannot. Contrary to Lawrence's main argument, modern humans are not defined by their limitations, but by their ability to break out of them. In contrast, no computer yet devised can and will ever escape physical constraints in the same way.
In any case, comparing human intelligence to AI is always misleading. The human brain does not simply process information like a computer does. The mind is not just software that runs on the brain's hardware. Human intelligence is a constantly expanding, ongoing, open-ended, fundamentally social process. It is rooted in the cultural mores, emotions, morals, and knowledge that we have created and passed down over generations.
Today, there is a tragically widespread ludicrous belief that the mindless machines we have created will soon dominate us. This is less evidence of AI's “superior” intelligence than a symptom of our anti-human zeitgeist. It is the product of a deterministic, fatalistic culture with lowered expectations, in which humans are no longer seen as autonomous, history-making agents.
Lawrence ends the book by reminding us of the moral of Goethe's “The Sorcerer's Apprentice,” in which the hapless apprentice casts a spell but has no control over the outcome. It's a good analogy for how big tech companies sometimes deploy software systems they can't control. But it doesn't have to be that way.
We need to resist attempts to portray humans as fragile, limited, “atomic” beings who are no match for the technology we create. We can, if we choose, shape technology to suit our needs and desires. We must once again speak up for humanity.
The Atomic Human: Understanding Ourselves in the Age of AI by Neil D. Lawrence is published by Allen Lane.
Dr. Norman Lewis is an author and visiting scholar at the Brussels MCC. His Substack is What a Piece of Work is Man!
