The Age of A.I. and Our Human Future

by Henry Kissinger

For the following two hundred years, Kant’s essential distinction between the thing-in-itself and the unavoidably filtered world we experience hardly seemed to matter. While the human mind might present an imperfect picture of reality, it was the only picture available. What the structures of the human mind barred from view would, presumably, be barred forever—or would inspire faith and consciousness of the infinite. Without any alternative mechanism for accessing reality, it seemed that humanity’s blind spots would remain hidden. Whether human perception and reason ought to be the definitive measure of things, lacking an alternative, for a time, they became so. But AI is beginning to provide an alternative means of accessing—and thus understanding—reality.