In today’s column, I examine an emerging speculation about AI and humanity that seems to be gaining traction. The conjectured belief involves your left-brain and your right-brain.
You probably are familiar with the trope that your noggin consists of the left side of your brain and the right side of your brain. The right-brain supposedly does your creative activities while the left-brain does all the logical, analytical work.
The latest twist is that the widespread use of generative AI and large language models (LLMs) is supposedly boosting the left-brain in your head and tends to undercut or mentally starve the right-brain, such that we are all gradually becoming left-brain dominant and right-brain decayed. Soon, humankind is going to be a society of left-brain superiority, which might seem handy as we all will be highly analytical, but the downside is that we won’t be able to creatively get ourselves out of a paper bag.
Let’s talk about it.
This analysis of AI breakthroughs is part of my ongoing Forbes column coverage on the latest in AI, including identifying and explaining various impactful AI complexities (see the link here).
The Grand Conjecture
Does the advent of generative AI and LLMs have anything to do with how we think?
Some argue that modern-era AI does indeed have an impact on our thinking processes (see my coverage at the link here). One of those arguments involves the classic left-brain versus right-brain theory. This is the prevalent theory regarding the two halves of the brain, such that each half has a presumed dedicated purpose when it comes to your thinking processes.
Our left-brain is alleged to do our logical thinking. Whenever you are asked to think about how to solve a puzzle, perform arithmetic calculations, and otherwise undertake analytics, your left brain does the heavy lifting for you. In contrast, the right-brain does creative work. For example, you are asked to paint whatever you want on a blank canvas. The right-brain gets engaged and comes up with something imaginative. Boom, the right-brain guides you as you paint your own version of a Mona Lisa.
How does that concept about the brain have any bearing on contemporary AI?
The floating belief is that generative AI and LLMs are supercharging the left side of your brain.
Takeover Of The Left-Brain Over The Right-Brain
Here’s the deal.
Millions upon millions of people are using AI daily to help them think through problems and issues they face in life (OpenAI says that 800 million people are actively using ChatGPT on a weekly basis). All this use of AI is presumably bolstering the left-brain. We are unknowingly emboldened in our logical thinking. Though you assume that you are merely asking AI questions, the reality is that the answers are prodding your mind toward becoming increasingly analytical and logical.
Meanwhile, and here’s the hitch, the right-brain is apparently being starved. The AI is essentially feeding your left-brain fervently. It is, at the same time, not giving your right-brain a tad of mental contributions. As a result, the right-brain is said to be facing decay as it no longer has a substantive role in how you think.
Yikes, the claim is, all of humankind is subliminally being conditioned to use and expand their left-brain and toss asunder their right-brain. Humanity will be bereft of creative thinking. Are we destined to be robotic in our thinking, i.e., completely overcome by our left-brain?
Unpacking The Conjecture
Let’s tackle this surprising claim.
First, you might insist that if AI is really having that impact on human thinking and doing so at scale, the world is going to be a much better place because of it. Whereas up until now, people are often misled by their wild and creative side, perhaps we will shift toward a global society of logical thinkers. It would be a blessing to have our left-brain doing the mainstay of our thinking.
Imagine how much harmony we could have if everyone abided by the proper bounds of logic. Peace and tranquility are bound to arise. We would always carry on logical conversations with each other. Our behavior would be rooted in logic. All in all, this seems like a pretty good deal, and we apparently should gloriously thank the mass adoption of AI and LLMs for this shining outcome.
Whoa, comes the retort, you are forgetting about the vital importance of creative thinking.
The world would be filled with humans who are no different than automata. All of us would march to the tune of pure logic. The odds are that we would find ourselves not making progress because no one is able or willing to think outside the box anymore. People will stagnate. Nothing creative will occur. This is surely a dead-end path for the maturation of humankind.
Glass Is Half Full Rather Than Half Empty
While you are mulling over the idea that we would win on the logical side of life but be doomed on the creative side of life, let’s shift our perspective and see another way to interpret this conundrum.
Assume that the left-brain is truly getting bolstered via massive use of AI. The additional assumption is that the right-brain gets starved for attention. It shrivels up. It gets rusty.
A different way to think about the right-brain status is to assert that the right-brain will have to work twice as hard to keep up with the left-brain. In other words, rather than getting rusty, the right-brain is going to flourish. On its own. The mere fact that AI is aiming at the left-brain doesn’t ergo mean that the right-brain must sit idly by and silently watch this play out.
The right-brain will fight sternly to remain in the game. Our creative juices will go into overdrive. Overall, the right-brain will have its own natural processes become bolstered. This is likely better than relying on AI to help achieve a similar end.
In fact, here’s something else to be considered. With the left-brain getting all the AI attention, maybe the left-brain will get lazy. It won’t miraculously get bolstered. Instead, it will become wholly dependent upon AI to do our logical thinking.
The ultimate result will be that the right-brain reigns supremely, stoking humanity toward being supremely creative. Sadly, our left brain will use AI as a kind of mental crutch. You will barely be able to think logical thoughts without rushing to ask AI to help you out.
The speculated outcome is the utter reverse of what the prevailing conjecture suggests will happen. Period, end of story.
Poking A Big Hole In The Concoction
It seems we are in a dizzying conundrum, and society is going to either become left-brain superior or right-brain superior due to AI.
Toss a coin. It could be either path.
Well, there is another angle that turns the entire presumptive conjecture on its proverbial head. We are assuming that there is a left-brain and a right-brain way to conceive of the human brain. You could obviously say that the brain has a left side and a right side, but does that really mean that we think one way in one half, and think another way in the other half?
This common theory about the left-brain as analytical and the right-brain as creative is not as surefire as you probably assume or believe it to be. In an article that appeared in Smithsonian Magazine entitled “Am I Left Or Right Brained?” by Nate Fedrizzi, September 25, 2015, these salient points were made (excerpts):
- “The idea that people are either ‘left-brained’ (more concrete and analytical), or ‘right-brained’ (more abstract and creative), has been circulating in popular culture for decades.”
- “The lasting influence of this concept may be due to the natural human inclination to categorize everything — including the people around us.”
- “While it’s true that certain mental processes tend to occur in either the right or left hemisphere of the brain, research into the topic has found no evidence that people have stronger networks on one side of the brain or the other.”
- “Research has demonstrated that both sides of the brain work in tandem during creative and quantitative tasks alike.”
When The Left And Right Aren’t At Odds
The startling aspect for many is that they were likely raised to trust that there is a left-brain and right-brain demarcation consisting of logic-based versus being creative-based. This intuitively seems appealing. A person might even contend that they can feel their right-brain churning when they are doing creative tasks and then feel their left-brain humming when performing analytical tasks.
Is this principally due to an imposed belief, or does it really happen?
I am not going to get into that heated debate and will instead go back to the crux of this dialogue about AI, namely, whether AI is supporting one side of the brain over the other.
If the brain really isn’t composed of a left-brain for analytics and a right-brain for creativity, the AI is presumably going to be energizing the whole brain and not just one side. Another way to consider this is as follows. You ask the AI a question. Your whole brain is going to be involved in comprehending the answer. The AI, therefore, ends up indirectly stirring throughout your brain and not just on one side.
The Falsity Of Logic-Only And Non-Creative AI
This brings up an allied consideration.
At the get-go, we were taking at face value the assumption that the use of AI is solely bolstering the logic or analytical facets of human thinking. Let’s debunk that supposition. There is no particular bona fide reason to claim that AI is going to focus exclusively on being logical. I realize that movies and TV shows have, for many years, opted to portray AI and robots as though they will be trapped in a web of pure logic.
AI can be readily used for creative tasks, too.
People are using generative AI to write poems, compose creative stories, produce vivid, imaginative images and photos, and create inarguably creative videos. The point being that you cannot, with a straight face, proclaim that AI is only able to aid in analytical and logic-based chores. AI can contribute to being creative.
The bottom line is that even if you believe that AI is going to impact us on a left-brain and right-brain basis, there is as much chance that the AI will bolster the right-brain as it will the left-brain. The assumption that AI would only boost the left-brain on an analytical basis does not hold water. AI could do likewise to the creative right-brain.
A Global Wanton Experiment
No matter what your views are about the entire left-brain and right-brain enigma, I’d like to shift to a more macroscopic point about this topic.
We are in the midst of a grandiose experiment of a wanton nature. The experiment consists of making generative AI and LLMs fully available on a global basis to billions and billions of people. All of us are guinea pigs in this experiment. Nobody can say for sure what impact the widespread and continual use of AI is going to have on our minds.
I’ve been extensively analyzing and discussing that the use of AI will have a dual impact on our mental health, see my coverage at the link here. On the one hand, you could do legitimate handwringing that AI providing mental health advice on a global scale has the potential to undermine the mental health status of humanity. The contrasting viewpoint is that AI as a therapist and being available anywhere, on a 24/7 basis, could be the biggest boon for mental health in the history of humankind.
It’s up to us to determine which way these AI impacts are going to land.
As the famed novelist Henry Miller once said: “We create our fate every day we live.” That’s the truth and not contrived fiction.