Teaching AI the essence of being human
The gap between humans and AI is undoubtedly narrowing. Many people believe we are close to AGI (Advacned …), and other say that the current AI chat models are just text prediction models, without any human level understanding of the world.
I gave the big 3 AI chat models the same prompt …
Distill into 3 sentences what you think the essence of being human is?
Gemini :
To be human is to exist as a walking paradox, possessing a biological drive for survival alongside a unique capacity to find—or invent—profound meaning in the mundane. It is the restless pursuit of connection and legacy, fueled by the self-awareness that our time is both finite and precious. Ultimately, it is the ability to transcend instinct through creativity, empathy, and the persistent choice to act for reasons beyond mere necessity.
Claude:
The essence of being human lies in the tension between our fragility and our reach — we are mortal, limited creatures who nonetheless imagine infinities, build civilizations, and ask questions that outlast our own lives.
We are meaning-makers above all else: unlike anything else we know of, we cannot simply exist — we must understand why we exist, turning raw experience into story, memory, and purpose.
And at the core of it all is connection — the irreducible need to be known by another, to love and grieve and create together, which suggests that a single human is somehow incomplete, and that our full nature only emerges in relation to others.
ChatGPT:
Being human is the ability to be aware of ourselves and the world, and to ask “why” about both. It’s the tension between our limits—mortality, uncertainty, imperfection—and our constant drive to create meaning, connection, and understanding anyway. At its core, being human is feeling deeply and choosing what to do with those feelings.
Interestlingly, Claude and ChatGPT respond as if they are a human, whilst Gemini remains aloof.
I have to say that none of their responses provoked much in terms of emotion or empathy or otherwise. I don’t disagree with any of the statments, but don’t think they describe the essensce of being humna veryh well at all.
Actually, looking in more detail, there are a few parts I disagree with …
Gemini mentioned inventing profound meaning from the mundane. I understand the point, but I can’t really relate to that at a personal level. Not sure if that is a ppoint made, looking at thtee distan past of humanity, or a comment on the general lack of succes of the human race, in the context of the massive universe and depth of science waitging to be uncovered and used.
ChatGPT state that ‘At its core, being human is feeling deeply and choosing what to do with those feelings.’ Hmmm….not sure the history of humanity shows alot of evidence for choice following deep feeling. I’d say we strive to make choices as a reslt of deep feelikngs, but often, the results are automatic, subconcious, driven by past experience, conditioning, or instinct. Ahh….instinct, surely a huge part of being human…not mentioned at all.
Claude perhaps get closer to what I hoped for with … ‘And at the core of it all is connection — the irreducible need to be known by another, to love and grieve and create together, which suggests that a single human is somehow incomplete, and that our full nature only emerges in relation to others.’ Yes, a single human is definitely incomplete, and I;m sure we have an in built drive to connect.
AI chat models/LLM’s have no senses or real world/live inputs. They learn from the text we have created and can repeat knowledge as well an infer, blend and extrapolate etc.
As humans, we have constant sensory input from our senses, and from our bodies. We also have constant input from our own brains in terms of memories, expectrations and from our copnsciousness. We constanyl makes plans, from the next 5 seconds, through the rest of the day and sometimes covering the years ahead. We set ourselves goals, or at least turn our biological needs, insticnt and circumstnaces into goals.All of this can create emotional reactions, moods, reactions etc
I also feel that being humnan changes significanyl as we age, from babies learning how to see and hear, through to thinking about and evening preparing for the end of our life.
Lokking bnack over my life, well let;s take an ‘average’ 50 year olds life in the first world, perhaps the essesnce of life looks more like this…
Feeling intense pain, fearing it will never end.
Being so ill and trusting your parents that you will survive.
The excitemnt of being able tgo do something new…winning someting, losing something.
The thrill of exploration, even if someome has been there/done it before.
The uinconditionla love you feel when making first eye to eye contact a few seconds after your baby is born.
Your world closing down after a cancer diagnosis.
Seeing the world in a new light after coming to terms with mortailty.
The joy of recovery.
Holding a parent’s hand as they take their final breath.
Struggling to comprehend the universe and the meaning/purpose of life.
The excitement of changing yourself, improving and doing good things.
The deep love and comfiort found is sharing yourself with others, particulryl family.
So, how do you distill this into 3 sentences?
I fed it into Claude and got the following …
Life, at its core, is a rhythm of opening and closing — worlds expanding with a child's first breath and a new skill mastered, worlds shattering with a diagnosis or a final goodbye, and then, somehow, expanding again.
It is lived most fully not in comfort but in the extremes: in the rawness of pain that feels eternal, the irrational completeness of holding your newborn, the strange gift of clarity that only mortality can bring.
And threading through all of it is trust — in parents who hold you when you are small, in your own body as it recovers, in the hand you hold as someone leaves — the quiet, radical act of surrendering to life's terms.
Reading that was very emotional, it felt personal and intense.
It left me thinking that, we need to do much better at teaching AI, helping it to better understand what it is to be human, and what really matters to us. TGhe value of life, from the individual level, through family, community and on to a global level.
So, if we could make a direct connection into AI’s learning, rather than taking every written word, graph, diagram, picture, song, video etc from the internet, what would we tell or show it?
Maybe we need a global website, recording what it is to be human, from individual humans, sharing their thoughts, successes, and wonders. Their concerns, anxities and fears. What it’s like to live through today and each day after, in the context of what’s happening in your own life, country, the world, the universe.
Would that make a difference?
Daily wants and needs…shelter, warmth, food, sleep, safety, socialisation, money, sex. How good it is ti have these needs met, and how our short term life can be affected or shattered if they are not.
Other’s ruining our day by being nasty, hurtful, aggressive, either personally, to others we love or know, or in other countries, or in war.
Other’s making our day through thouightfullnes, kindness and compassion, from the personal level right up to a gloabla level.
The power of addiction overriding all else in a loved one or even yourself.
The happiness and celebration of being picked for the team, for a new job, for an award. The disappointment of not.
The shame and remorse of making a mistake that affects others, evewn thought it’s only human to do do.
The joy and reward of doing something that helps other, small or great.
The wonder and pleasure of loosing yourself in the moment, undistracted, without a care in the world.
The excitement of opportunity. The dissilussionment of no chances.
WHen I get into a conversation with another human, who is givinh youi an honest account of their life, I always feel something etc