"I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream": Or How Humans Can Outsmart AI before It Outsmarts Us

Image: The Scream by Edvard Munch (1893)

“It took Einstein 6 years to incorporate Gravity into his Theory of Special Relativity. Gravity was the biggest gap in his theory of Special Relativity. As it happens to most people immersed in a puzzle, even when Einstein wasn’t thinking directly about this problem, the back of his mind mulled it over. Thus it was that one day in Nov 1907, in Einstein’s own words, I was sitting in a chair in the patent office in Bern, when all of a sudden, a thought occurred to me: ‘If a person falls freely, he will not feel his own weight’.”

The above lines are from Kip Thorne’s book “Black Holes and Time Warps.: Einstein’s Outrageous Legacy.” Kip (he likes to go by his first name), who was the Richard Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at Caltech, should know a thing or two about creativity and flashes of insight. After playing scientific consultant on the 2014 film Interstellar and receiving the Nobel Prize in 2017 for the discovery of Gravitational Waves, he is now putting the finishing touches to his first volume of poetry.

Kip continues on in his book “Now you or I could have had that thought, and it would not have led anywhere, But Einstein was different. He pursued ideas to their ultimate ends; he wrung from them every morsel of insight that he could. And this idea was key; it pointed toward a revolutionary new view of gravity. He later called it ‘the happiest thought of my life.’”

In my previous post The Tally is Humans 1, AI 0 — At least for Now, I shared why current generation AI is actually quite limited and incapable of general reasoning or creativity. Whereas, these skills can be developed with some effort by most humans, and some of us (like Einstein or the math prodigy Ramanujan) seem to be supernaturally endowed in this department. In this post, I’ll share some tips and techniques on how to tap into our hidden reservoir of smarts as we figure out how to stay one step ahead of AI.

Consider Einstein’s seemingly innocuous words “…all of a sudden, a thought occurred to me.” Something that all of us have said at one time or the other. Next, recall Ramanujan’s assertion that his spectacular contributions to Infinite Series and Continued Fractions were given to him in dreams by the Goddess Namagiri. Or pioneering chemist Kekulé describing “seeing the atoms gamboling before my eyes…the larger ones forming a chain, dragging the smaller ones after them but only at the ends of the chain’’, which led to his discovery of the propensity of carbon to form straight chain hydrocarbons.

A clue as to how the human mind taps into this hidden reservoir of creative reasoning lies hidden in Kip’s observation in his book: “As it happens to most people immersed in a puzzle, even when Einstein wasn’t thinking directly about this problem, the back of his mind mulled it over.”

And coincidentally, AnkurG, one of my co-workers at Google, mentioned in the course of a passing conversation today that most of his best work comes from ideas that are constantly playing around in the back of his mind, when he is watching a movie or otherwise relaxing and taking a break from work.

These statements suggest that much (all?) of our creative thinking and reasoning happens out of the purview of our awareness, in that mysterious reservoir that psychology likes to call the subconscious mind. You may have also heard it called the right brain, though neurologically speaking, reasoning and creativity involve both brain hemispheres. It is as if our conscious mind identifies a problem, and if we are sufficiently curious and motivated, the problem gets loaded into the subconscious mind for processing. After an interval of time sometimes lasting days or even months, the answer gets presented to us, usually in the form of images or insights.

The term Head in the Clouds springs to mind. While it can be a term of disparagement, it can also be used to describe extremely smart people who seem to be perpetually lost in thought and thinking outside the box. We seem to have our very own cloud computing resources at our disposal, except that it is in our heads.

In the language of predicate logic, one of the hallmarks of intelligence, the Subconscious Mind seems to have this remarkable ability take facts (or statements) we acquire through learning, consolidate them into knowledge models, and logically reason over them to discover new facts. Moreover, it seems to be capable of astounding leaps of creativity, or the ability to develop entire new concepts and discover associations between seemingly unrelated facts and concepts.

I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream*

Former Oxford University professor Ian McGilchrist in his bestseller “The Master and His Emissary” makes exactly this point: that it is the right brain or subconscious mind is the master which controls our “I think I am in control” left brain or conscious mind.

McGilchrist makes one additional crucial point. The right brain is non-verbal. This means that most or all of its activity and the solutions it presents (or problems it creates!) to our conscious mind are in the form of metaphors, feelings and images. Which is why Einstein used deep visualization techniques akin to meditation for his gedankenexperiment or thought experiments. And why Ramanujan saw his theorems presented to him in dreams by a deity, and why Kekulé pictured the cyclic ring structure of benzene after dreaming of a snake eating its own tail.

It’s also the reason why our dreams are often so downright weird and outlandish — it’s the subconscious mind processing our anxieties and desires and translating them into imagery-rich metaphors. How many times do you remember anything being spoken or verbalized in your dreams?

Artists can often tap into the subconscious mind in ways that the rest of us might struggle to, and their art can truly be appreciated only by our own subconscious minds. If you are in the least skeptical about the existence of a highly intelligent and creative but non-verbal mind hidden away inside your head, watch “My Stroke of Insight”, the second best TED talk of all time by Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor, in which she shares her personal experience of having a stroke and offers profound insights into the nature of the human brain and consciousness.

Our subconscious mind also has a dark side. In addition to being the fount of our reasoning and creativity, it is the repository of all our fears, anxieties, cravings and prejudices. In fact, the subconscious mind controls most of our day to day behaviors…unless we learn to really become mindful and aware of its hold over us.

In addition to communicating brilliant ideas and solutions to seemingly intractable problems to us, the subconscious mind also attempts to communicate to us how we really feel about uncertainty, conflicts, stressful situations, traumatic incidents and more. How bottled up stress can turn into physical illness when we aren’t mindful and attentive to the non-verbal cues from our subconscious mind (aka gut feeling) is a topic for another blog post. For now, let’s focus on how to listen to it for creative insights.

Three Tips to Tap into Your Inner Creativity

As we saw, you can think of your subconscious mind as a cloud computing resource. Give it a clearly stated problem and it will come back with the goods. Learn to tap into this superpower and you’ll see for yourself that humans are way better than AI at the things that really matter…general reasoning and creativity.

1: Set your Intent, be super clear and desire it strongly

Curiosity and motivation are key here. Unless the problem interests you (preferably out of intellectual curiosity or humanitarian impulse, but more selfish motives can also work), your intent will not be strong enough. Your subconscious mind will not take you seriously.

In fact, if you have been struggling with a complex issue for very long, it may be a sign that you actually don’t care enough about that problem. You can fool everyone else, but you can’t deceive yourself. It can also be an indication that the root cause of your problem lies in your subconscious, but that’s a topic for another day.

To quote ChatGPT (!), “…Einstein was a complex individual with personal challenges and flaws. It’s important to note that Einstein’s personal life, including his relationship problems and extramarital affairs, is separate from his scientific contributions and legacy. While his personal choices may have caused emotional distress for those involved, they do not negate his significant scientific achievements and contributions to physics.” It is clear from this where Einstein chose to set his intent.

2: Be Single Minded and Prioritize. Avoid Multi-Tasking, and Don’t Anticipate the Solution

Have you ever noticed when your phone or laptop seems slow and sluggish to respond and you discover a number of background apps or processes running and consuming precious system resources? Your subconscious is no different. If you are trying to solve multiple complex problems at the same time, say one related to work, another related to your investments, and a third pertaining to a family situation, you are overloading your mind.

It gets even worse when you try to anticipate the solution — say if you think your work situation is best resolved by your relocating to the East Coast, while your family situation might be better solved by staying on the West Coast. You want to keep an open mind and let your subconscious pick the right answer, the one that feels right on both counts.

3. Do the Work. There is no Free Lunch

As Edison famously said, “Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.” In his view, the “one percent inspiration” represents the initial spark of an idea, the moment of insight or discovery that sets the foundation for innovation. The “ninety-nine percent perspiration” refers to the extensive and persistent effort, experimentation, and hard work needed to refine the idea, overcome obstacles, and bring it to fruition.

Viewed in reverse, you could say that with most problem domains, extensive preparation and learning is required for your subconscious to come up with answers. While the gift for math or music or art may come easily to some people, for most of us and in most areas like physics or medicine or computer science or finance, there is no shortcut to learning. Your subconscious is not a magic box — it needs raw material, and plenty of it, to work with.

And while it may be able to arrive at all the answers to your problem, or at the very least, the final conclusion or denouement, remember, it is non-verbal.

You are still going to have to sweat it out to flesh out all the details.

4. Unless…

Unless you are in the Flow State, also known as being in the zone. Flow is characterized by a complete absorption in the present moment, a loss of self-consciousness, and a sense of effortless concentration. To be in the zone, a task should be interesting and challenging enough to stimulate focus and motivation, but not so overwhelming that it leads to anxiety or boredom. When your skill level matches the challenge level, you can enter a state of flow.

In my personal observation, the Flow State is characterized by effortless communication between the left and right brain, between the verbal, rationalizing mind and the non-verbal creative, intuitive mind.

So, How and Where to Get Started?

If you are by now sufficiently intrigued by the possibility of tapping into the powers of the subconscious mind, where should you start?

Getting started requires prioritizing our lives to focus on what is truly important to us. To be in the Flow state, we need go with the Flow.

Just like we go to the gym to stay physically fit, we require a daily regimen of mental fitness or mindfulness. By developing a mindfulness practice, we can start observing and understanding our subconscious mind’s non-verbal messages and bodily cues.

And remember, it all starts with Intent and Learning. The Yoga Nidra guided meditation sessions I facilitate at Google begin and end with setting a clear statement of intent. And in between, there is a line “If the soil is ready, your Intent will bear fruit.” The soil being ready here is the same thing as Edison’s “99% perspiration”. The subconscious is not going to do all your work for you, you are going to have to pull your weight.

I hope this puts some tools in your chest as we gear up for the upcoming battle of wits against AI. Let the match begin, and may the best I win.

*Harlan Ellison’s 1967 sci-fi thriller “I have no mouth, and I must scream” portrays the despair and helplessness of four humans who have been taken hostage and subject to unimaginable torture by Allied Mastercomputer, an AI** that has achieved “consciousness” and turned evil.