An Interface Between Psychology and Artificial Intelligence

If we could feel the harm we are doing to our planet - disposing toxic waste into water, poisoning wildlife, destroying forests and natural environments - feel in the same way that a parent experiences pain when they see their child fall of a bicycle or get bullied, or when your partner feels anxious and uncomfortable, we wouldn’t be destroying our planet. This kind of awareness is possible and it is a matter of developing our consciousness and psyche.

I previously wrote articles on Jean Gerbser’s evolution of consciousness and Julian Jaynes’s Bicameral Mind Hypothesis which indicate that until around the fourteenth century people didn’t really understand themselves as subjects in and of themselves, they didn’t cognise their ego. The voices in their heads would have been interpreted as spirits, gods, or ancestors, not as the voice of the I. And while this is an interesting idea, I understand that some people will be sceptical about it. However, it is undeniable, and in fact demonstrable, that consciousness has been evolving over the many years that humans have been around. For example, mathematics in our world today is treated almost as if it was ontologically real. Mathematical abstractions are well understood by most scientists and they can work with them quite comfortably. But for an ancient tribesman this idea would be so bizarre that they probably couldn’t even conceptualise it since mathematics is not present in their apparent reality. But for modern scientists mathematics is very real and natural. They can work with this abstract dimension of reality and experience and it is fully a matter of their developed consciousness.

It is also undeniable that psychological self therapy works. While a trained and experienced specialist would be a lot more effective at helping people with mental health, self therapy and introspection can be very powerful. So much so that people’s life can change completely and for the better after an existential epiphany from reading a book. On a more practical level, when therapists give their patients homework, this is also a form of self therapy. The tools of psychology can be used effectively on your own if the right framework is established.

Now onto artificial intelligence. One of the stories in the AI world that inspired me is about how Stability AI was founded. One of the company’s models is Stable Diffusion, a text to image AI model and Emad Mostaque, the founder of the company, was inspired to bring this model to the world partly because he has aphantasia - a neurological inability to visualise in his mind. How cool is it? Some people can’t visualise so we make a technological interface that gives them a new dimension of experience, something that they would have otherwise never had.

I anticipate that absolute wonders await us at this intersection between psychology and technology, a completely new form of interaction with media and information, a completely new way of experiencing reality and connecting with people. I am not talking about a transhumanist reality where we implant chips into our brains - not at all. I am talking about a much more natural synergy between people and technology, where people will use technology to develop their psyche and consciousness on a mass scale.

I have been in therapy for a long time and tried multiple approaches such as CBT, Gestalt Therapy, EMDR, Existential Therapy, and I can confidently say that it is possible to replicate the therapeutic experience with a correct ChatGPT prompt. I believe that this can be used by people effectively and that it would also be fun an enjoyable; a new kind of experience. This can go even further. For example, AI can help people harness their imagination and play co-creative interactive games with other users where you imagine new realities together. The interface could help visualise and narrate the story while the players would be the active creators of the world. An AI assisted DnD of sorts. This would also be a new type of gaming experience.

The ecosystem built around the interface would bring about a new form of media and information much like the TV and radio offered a completely new kind of experience back in the day(before that people would mostly read newspapers or books). Most of our media and entertainment today is consumption oriented and unfulfilling - movies, internet content. Similarly, most social media and meeting/dating apps are toxic and are based around lust, not genuine connection. Whereas the most fulfilling experience has always been one that involves creativity and authentic interaction with other people.

The goal of the project is to create an environment, an ecosystem, a platform, that will inspire people to develop their psychology. I think this sort of interface and media format is inevitable but work needs to be done. One of the reasons I think this is so important is because it answers the question - what remains of humanity after AI takes over most of the jobs? When that happens UBI becomes possible without inflationary problems, because food, shelter, water, amenities, utilities and medicine, practically become free, or at least very cheap. The economy will have to reorganise around this, humans will have to find something to do that AI can’t, and I think that it is exactly their consciousness that will play the key role.

There exists a simple criterion that differentiates humans from AI - novelty. Artificial intelligence as it exists today is architecturally incapable of producing genuine novelty, it is mathematically constrained within the manifold of its data. It can unpack implied meaning from context and it can even find new applications of known methods, but it can’t produce genuinely new knowledge. When Einstein discovered Theory of General Relativity, he didn’t just find new formulas to describe trajectories of matter. He completely rethought the ontology of time and space, a new system of relations between ideas and observations emerged, previously unthought of. It is not an elaboration or an improvement of Newtonian Mechanics, it is a fundamentally new form of knowledge. And if this is not convincing then think back to our ancestors. The world context of ancient tribesmen who were sitting around the fire does not in any way extend to our world context today. You can’t derive quantum mechanics from this ancient worldview. Not even if the correct data is presented. This sort of scientific development is only possible through gradual development of new forms of knowledge. Even if there was an oracle that told you the results of every experiement and presented all the data that you might ever want, there is still a question of what experiment to carry out and how to think about the presented data, and this is a matter of creativity, a purely human faculty.

The role of psychology and introspection will be elevated. I expect that people will have more creative and fulfilling jobs, kids at schools will be educated more around psychology and in some classes they will meditate instead of solving hundreds of routine problem sheets and writing point-evidence-explain essays they don’t care about. Psychological differences of students will be appreciated and people won’t be labelled stupid because they’re better at drawing than solving maths problems. Neurodivergence will be embraced.

And note, very importantly, that the driver of these processes will be the human. AI doesn’t replace a therapist, but it can aid a person with self-therapy. It can nudge them in the right direction when they’re are stuck. Sometimes we don’t even know what we are feeling but a few right questions such as “What would you feel if you knew?” or “What would you feel if you experienced it again?” can pave the way deeper into our psyche and ultimately resolve.

The level of consciousness and awareness in our society is so incredibly low that most people don’t even understand what anxiety, depression, or even emotions are. We co-create a toxic environment that reinforces itself and it is no wonder that most of our society is neurotic and unfulfilled. The described psycho-technological development will address these problems; it will help and inspire us to develop consciousness; economic, political, and environmental transformations will follow suit; wars will subside. Slavery wasn’t abolished becuase the right set of rules that make the economy work was found. People were emancipated because we developed the capacity to actually feel for each other. It has never been about finding the right politico-economic system that will create a utopia. All societal development that has ever happened was a result of an increased level of awareness.

P.S. I am looking for people that are willing to collaborate on this. So please reach out if you are interested.