As technologies advance, do we humans also develop? As technologies advance, do we humans also develop?

What Drives My Research

With the arrival of the age of artificial intelligence, the human intelligence we once reached only through great effort has come within easy reach. Some now say that an intelligence greater than our own may one day replace us. In an age when intelligence becomes readily available and no longer scarce, where can we find the meaning of our existence as human beings? Artificial intelligence already performs tasks that we have long believed to require human intellectual ability, and its current technical limits may be overcome sooner than we expect. Then what should we think for, what should we achieve by ourselves, and what kind of life should we pursue? I believe this is one of the most fundamental questions we face today.

While we must respond to rapidly changing technology in a timely way, I believe we also need something timeless in our lives, something we can hold on to however the times may change. For me, that is philosophy. Philosophy does not remain in grand or abstract theory. Wherever we are and whatever life we live, it is the attitude of asking ourselves what we value, why we pursue it, and what consequences our choices bring. To keep asking these questions throughout our lives, we must be able to question again what we have taken for granted, examine the grounds that support our thoughts, and continually review and develop our thinking. If philosophy is asking about the direction of life, the power to think is what allows us to find that direction for ourselves and keep examining it.

Thinking rarely begins from nothing. We develop our thinking by encountering what already exists, understanding it, evaluating it, and connecting it to our own knowledge and experience. Sometimes we interpret the familiar in a new way, and sometimes we discover new possibilities between things that seem unrelated. Underlying this whole process is information interaction. Reading a book, searching for information on the web, talking with people, chatting with AI, and the many other experiences in our lives pass through different media, but they are all processes of forming thought through information. This is exactly the process I study: how information interaction is connected to human thinking, and how we can support this interaction for better thinking.

I hope that people can be fully equipped to use new technologies while keeping ownership of their own thinking. I hope that as the abilities of artificial intelligence advance, our own abilities advance as well, and that we do not stop at being satisfied with the results technology provides but pursue higher levels of achievement on our own. And above all, I hope that the very process of thinking, exploring, and achieving is itself a joyful process.

Let me return to the first question. In an age when intelligence becomes readily available and no longer scarce, where can we find the meaning of our existence as human beings? I want to search for the answer in what we ask, how we think, and what we choose to achieve by ourselves. As technology becomes more capable, I hope people can also think more deeply, explore further, and grow more richly. This is the future I wish to contribute to through my research.