Authentic Practical Identities and the Need for Targeted Automation

In an age were artificial intelligence can do everything for us why should we do things for ourselves? What is at stake is the intrinsic value of doing things for ourselves, our relationship to the world, and the sense of personal identity that springs forth from our actions. An age were automated machines do everything for us, threatens to de-skill our perceptions and to turn the individual into a passive observer rather than an active participant in the world. Therefore, this paper draws upon the phenomenology of skilled perception and the Aristotelian concept of Aretê to argue for the importance of doing high-quality work for its own sake and how such domains of activity are central to our personal identities. What is required to live authentically is the targeted automation of routinized work and to enable the individual to freely choose their own practical identities based on its potential to provide an engaging perceptual niche. AI may either enhance or diminish our authenticity in three salient ways; it can either be used to liberate us from disengaging work, to facilitate psychologically engaging work, or to annihilate engaging perceptual niches and to close off corners of reality from mankind forever.