As AI becomes more human-like, what will happen to humanity?

It’s looking increasingly likely that 2025 will be the year "My people will talk to your people" becomes "My AI will talk to your AI." Are you ready?

OpenAI recently introduced an artificial intelligence model that emulates human-like reasoning about complex problems. It even shows the steps in its reasoning, so that humans (or other AIs) can check its work.

This advance was quickly emulated by other AI developers. What then followed was "agentic AI," where AI agents can be given a complex goal, use their new reasoning power to work out the complex steps necessary to achieve that goal, and then, if given control of a computer, do what is necessary to achieve the goal.

Google, OpenAI and Anthropic had already made such agents available to their customers, at a cost. Then, the Chinese startup DeepSeek launched AI models that compete with the best U.S. models and come free of charge.

This has spooked investors in U.S.-based AI. DeepSeek isn’t just new competition for established players; it created its model without the latest processors and at a fraction of the cost of its rivals. Moreover, the model is open, allowing other AI developers to understand how it works, emulate it and use it in novel ways.

Most importantly, DeepSeek AI’s entry into a previously closed market will accelerate the presence of AI agents, profoundly affecting humans and human society.

It isn't hard to see how agentic AI will make businesses more efficient. AI agents will speed up business processes, increase productivity and almost certainly replace humans (thus reducing payroll costs). They will become your travel agent, admin assistant, assistant programmer, prototype tester, marketing manager and quite possibly your digital doppelganger in your favorite video game.

The limits to what these AI agents can accomplish will be less the limit of their rapidly increasing ability than the limited imaginations of those who choose to employ them. They are sure to disrupt our economic and social systems — and with that disruption change our understanding of ourselves as human.

Humans are social creatures. While the silicone brains of AI models are dedicated exclusively to problem solving, human minds are far more focused on human relationships. Some people are happy in a cubicle solving problems, but most of us eventually end up around the coffee bar or water cooler socializing.

Because we are social creatures, we change when someone new comes into our group. A newborn infant changes its mother and father into parents. A child who becomes a brother or sister is now a sibling. And think about what happens when there is a new student at school, or a new employee or boss at work. Up to now, the newcomers have been other humans. But as AI agents become agentic, they will increasingly shape our self-understanding.

In their virtual form, they may draw us into a more abstract and disembodied sense of what it means to be human. With robots or androids, we might begin to see an ever more machine-like understanding of ourselves — and they could bring out our worst instincts for exploitation.

That was the theme of the first play about robots, "Rossum’s Universal Robots,” in 1920. Twenty years after that, Isaac Asimov saw the issue clearly, in the first story of the I-Robot series, “Robbie.” A robot au pair is all it took to change the family dynamic, and not for the good.

The more we treat technology like a human partner, the more we will understand ourselves as a form of technology. AI agents will accelerate that process. Before this goes further, we should pause and take stock of our own humanity.

For all their promise, we will not find our humanity in our AI companions. It can only be found within our fellow humans, and only by doing what we humans alone are known to do: imagining together a fuller and richer humanity than any technology could emulate or create.

Robert Hunt is the director of global theological education at Perkins School of Theology on the SMU Dallas campus and author of the upcoming book, “All Brain and No Soul? Real Humanity in an AI Age.”

Topics

Director of the Game ‘Avowed’ Says AI Can’t Replace Human Creativity

“Good game stories are going to be written by good narrative designers,” says Obsidian’s Carrie Patel. The new fantasy RPG she helmed gets an early release today.
Wired - 6d
HP to Buy Humane, Maker of the Ai Pin, for $116 Million

Humane, which marketed its Ai Pin as the next big thing after smartphones, had raised $240 million from investors, including OpenAI’s Sam Altman. The pin will be discontinued.
The New York Times - 1d
AI Startup Humane to Wind Down Wearable Pin Business

It’s selling its assets to HP for $116 million. It had raised about $241 million from OpenAI and others.
Inc. - 13h
GTA 6 Boss Discusses Long Wait And How AI Won't Replace "Creative Genius" Of Humans

Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick has commented on the long wait for Grand Theft Auto VI and spoke out against the idea that artificial intelligence technologies will surpass the "creative genius" ...
GameSpot - Feb. 11
LangChain shows AI agents aren’t human-level yet because they’re overwhelmed by tools

LangChain evaluated a single AI agent to see if its performance degrades when given more context and tools, essentially overwhelming it.
VentureBeat - Feb. 11
Aomni just raised $4M to prove AI can boost sales without replacing humans

Aomni raises $4M to help sales teams close more deals with AI-powered research agents that provide real-time, deep prospect intelligence—boosting close rates by up to 40%.
VentureBeat - 1d
Ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati unveils Thinking Machines: A startup focused on multimodality, human-AI collaboration

The OpenAI rival will focus on strong infrastructure, multimodality and human-AI collaboration (as opposed to purely agentic systems).
VentureBeat - 1d
The human mind is in a recession

Technology strains our brain health, capacity and skills
Financial Times - 3d
Building a humane world for animals

The Black Beauty Ranch in East Texas, a sanctuary where hundreds of rescued animals reside in a protected habitat, is just part of the work of Humane World for Animals, whose mission is to improve ...
CBS News - 3d

More from The Hill

Rep. Don Bacon says Trump 'wrong' to call Zelensky a dictator

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said President Trump was “wrong” to call Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a dictator on Wednesday and for appearing to be “standing on the side” of Russian President ...
The Hill - 1h
Trump says federal government should 'take over' DC

President Trump on Wednesday said the federal government should "take over the governance" of Washington, D.C. "I think that we should govern the District of Columbia," Trump told reporters aboard ...
The Hill - 2h
Trump signs order targeting any federal benefits going to those in the country illegally

President Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order intended to identify and eliminate any federal financial benefits going to immigrants who entered the country illegally, something already ...
The Hill - 3h
Appeals court won’t immediately revive Trump’s birthright citizenship order

A federal appeals court Wednesday evening declined the Trump administration’s request to partially revive the president’s executive order restricting birthright citizenship. The Justice Department ...
The Hill - 3h
Senate GOP dismayed by Trump, Zelensky war of words

{beacon} Welcome to The Hill's Defense & NatSec newsletter {beacon} Defense &National Security Defense &National Security The Big Story Senate GOP dismayed by Trump, Zelensky war of words Public ...
The Hill - 3h