“Open the pod door, HAL.
“I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that”
Do you remember that scene in “2001: A Space Odyssey?”
Way back in 1968 we got a glimpse of a future when artificial intelligence could go rogue and turn against its creators. As today’s AI creators plunge ahead willy nilly despite clear indications of the dangers it looks like the future is now.
AI, like all human inventions, is at once a boon and a curse. Used responsibly it could help us make life saving discoveries and free us from the tedium of many menial tasks. But since when has mankind used technology responsibly?
A headline caught my eye recently regarding the dangers of self-driving cars. Tesla is recalling a huge number of them in the wake of some high profile fatalities that occurred while the auto pilot was engaged. The automatic driving systems are being “upgraded.” There’s just one problem, says the article. These revisions will not prevent accidents when drivers use the system in situations in which they should not be used.
Ah. There’s the rub. Unsurprisingly, many of the accidents were due to driver non-compliance with restrictions on the use of the technology. Since drivers are often non-compliant with traffic laws and rules of the road, such as those that prohibit use of hand held phones, why should we expect them to follow the rules regarding auto-pilot use?
Observing today’s driving habits, it’s obvious that many drivers never learned how to drive properly to begin with. If everyone learned and complied with the rules, the number of traffic incidents would plummet. Do we really need self-driving cars, or do we need drivers who drive cars properly?
AI systems such as Chat GPT are at the center of a debate about how they should, or should not, be used by students. Seriously, do we have to ask whether it’s OK for a student to have a robot write a paper for them? If it’s prohibited will that stop them from doing it? It won’t even stop their teachers from doing it. Even mainstream newspapers are publishing articles written by AI. For now AI can be discerned from the real thing. That won’t be the case much longer. It already isn’t for most people.
It sure seems that as machines keep getting smarter, people keep getting dumber. Or at least no smarter. The more we rely on AI, the more of our own intelligence we will lose. This may help explain why the world is becoming more and more of a mess.
One day, back before pay at the pump, I filled my car with gas and walked into the convenience store to pay. There was a long line of people waiting for the cashier.
It turned out the cash register was down, not computing change (yes, people even used cash back then) and the teenager manning it had not a clue as to how to add or subtract. His generation had not been grilled with arithmetic flash cards as mine had been. They had calculators. Why cram their brains with facts they didn’t need to use?
Well, maybe for a situation such as this?
More than just knowledge, facts and skills, we are losing our capacity for critical thinking and giving over control of all sorts of important things to anonymous actors, electronic ones and the humans who employ them. They can be used, and are being used, to spread misinformation, create deep fakes and generally wreak havoc. Just what we need these days.
This is the price we pay for laziness.
Early in the personal computer age a common saying was “garbage in garbage out.” Today, there is so much garbage clogging up our information systems, we will soon be in need of an electronic information waste disposal system.
In his landmark film, Stanley Kubrick was clearly ahead of his time, but a takeover by the machines is not just science fiction any longer.
It’s happening before our eyes.
An Author's Inner Mind 