AI technology does not pursue happiness

Having used ChatGPT and other GPT-based artificial intelligence programs over the past few weeks, I have found they have several advantages over us humans.

Most notably with speed, ChatGPT can rapidly browse the whole internet-based database. It can then compose sentences and summarize information almost as well as humans, and improve itself via deep learning.

But there is one aspect in which ChatGPT, and indeed all AIs, lags far behind humans. The pursuit of happiness is what fundamentally distinguishes humans from AI.

That might sound grandiose, but that happens in both daily life and over the course of human history. For example, as individuals, we work hard so as to earn money for a bigger apartment or a new car, for the purpose of improving our living standards.

It is similar for human society as a whole. People grew tired of walking on foot, so means of transport were developed using wheels, carts and carriages, then trains and cars. People wanted to travel by water, so they developed canoes and rafts, then boats and ships. People dreamed of flying in the sky and to the moon, so planes and spacecraft were invented.

In a sense, it is people's "greediness", or the seeking of a life better than the present, that propels human history forward. That applies to the development of AI. But ChatGPT, or any AI, is in essence only a pile of code, written as a means to solve problems.

To solve problems is the only reason for AIs to exist, for which purpose they can improve via deep learning. But they cannot raise problems to solve, which is why they cannot improve independently.

In philosophy, mankind's pursuit of happiness has been rooted in the genes of primary life that originated on Earth about 3.8 billion years ago and which have evolved over that span of time into the species that exist today.

Yet AI is without any genes. It has been created as a tool to render service to make people's lives better, as part of the whole efforts of improving lives.

That's one reason why there is no need, at least at present, to worry about AIs replacing humans.