"The storks have begun arriving back from their winter break. They've flown 10,000 kilometers and yet still manage to find the way all on their own. In contrast, most people can't even find the nearest supermarket without GPS navigation."
Ever since smartphones and computers have become like external hard drives for our brains, almost no one bothers to learn their loved ones' telephone numbers by heart. Many people even turn on their GPS en route to the supermarket. The Internet of Things may accentuate this trend even further. "By 2020, 50 billion devices will be connected, will be able to think together, think instead of us and even independently of us. Hopefully they'll support our thinking," concluded moderator Wolf-Christian Ulrich at telegraphen_lounge "Generation digital – are we forgetting how to think?“ with his stork example. We turned to the experts to discuss whether it might harm our "brains 4.0" if devices do more and more thinking for us. Could digitization dumb us down?
German Bundestag member Gerold Reichenbach, deputy chairman of the Committee on the Digital Agenda, doesn't think "that we'll forget how to think.“ The SPD politician points out that there are already many things we don't need to do any more. We don't know how to track animals or predict the weather. But, he says, our modern society, supported by devices that help us think, has created new challenges to face. Those challenges aren't the same as when we were all hunter-gatherers. "The key question is whether we continue to think for ourselves or become entirely reliant on devices," says Reichenbach.
"All parts of our daily lives have already been heavily digitized," points out Dr. Sven Sebastian, head of the Proventika Institute for applied brain research. To see exactly what impact this trend is having on us, Dr. Sebastian suggests trying to go without digital aids. That way we can see how our brains cope when digitization is stripped away. The digital dementia or addiction that may result from this is the negative side of digitization. They can cause stress and the release of stress hormones that disrupt the brain. People who use digital technologies too often can also lose emotional sensitivity. This is a particular challenge of digitization. Digital cats are, of course, cold and the brain picks up on this according to Dr. Sebastian.
The more we rely on digital devices the more likely we are to miss essential skills. That would leave us in serious difficulties if the system ever crashed. Still, Gerold Reichenbach points out that, even before digitization, evolution wrought constant changes on what was considered to be essential skills. "Go walking today in the woods and you don't need to know how to identify a dangerous bear or how to escape," says Reichenbach.
Before tackling the question of whether our descendants will think differently from us because of digitization, we first have to consider what thinking is in the first place, recommends Dr. Sebastian. It is a means of processing information that helps us through daily life. Neuroscience says that "every brain thinks for as long as it is alive, breathing and functioning. Thinking is what it does all day long. And that is what it will always do." In his opinion the way we think will simply adapt but that shouldn't concern us.
In response to the question of how artificial intelligence will help us make progress, Patrick Weissert says that we are currently expecting far too much from artificial intelligence (AI). "AI generally performs very simple tasks for people, like planning a meeting, or is used to process extremely large volumes of data that people couldn't do on their own," says the founder and Chief Product Officer of German Autolabs. His start-up is developing an artificial, AI-based co-driver. Expectations are too high, for example, when it comes to autonomous driving. The technology is not mature enough yet to be used in practice, but it is being discussed as if it were. "Something similar happened in the past with steam engines. A whole series of them exploded," he reminds the listeners.
Dr. Sebastian says that, paradoxically, the more automated things become, the more vital the role played by human brains. Moreover, AI is the fruit of human ingenuity and is reliant on people to set and monitor the rules and standards governing how it is used in practice. As such, human intelligence remains an essential ingredient.
