The charges and counter-charges are flowing fast and furious. The capital being invested and the expected returns are mind-bending. Yes, artificial intelligence (AI), in its middle school years, is rattling us from Silicon Valley to Washington and in between.
Domestically and internationally, competition is intense. Immensely rich and hyper-competitive men jockey for position. A sort of elite “man-o-sphere. The government, well it seems disoriented as it tries to catch up with what few understand and even fewer can interpret.
This is a strange time—unparalleled. Invention is not unusual. An invention that is said to threaten civilization is. Maybe gunpowder is analogous; one writer referred to it as the “industrialization of death”.
I have lived long enough to experience the ebb and flow of aggressive human forces. Ted Turner died recently and his death resulted in an outpouring of commentaries. I knew Ted and had a front row seat as his actions transformed the media landscape. But at the end of the day Ted re-shaped television, not civilization. The Ted Turners of the 21st Century have a more ambitious aim.
The fearful among us anticipate horrors—the loss of human agency—jobs and worse.
The positive, if too optimistic, talk of disease eradication as the artificial does what humans can’t do. Maybe, just maybe, they say, perpetual living is in sight. Well if it is, we need to halt procreation.
My take: we should not quit having babies. We should watch a good movie and enjoy imaginative minds. We should listen to gifted composers—both old and new. We should recall the perspicacity and leadership of Abraham Lincoln and ask whether machines and software could have done it better. And we should drive through commercial districts and think about the wonderful harvest of ideas and products produced by entrepreneurs.
Robots are here. They do some jobs well and overtime will do more. Data centers too as they parse and analyze history and provide answers. Maybe a soulless machine, powered by algorithms, will take over, but I doubt it.
My take: AI is hugely important. But, so was the calculator, the computer and then the network of computers. Each extended human potential, attracted investment and were absorbed in the human-sphere. There were some negatives—they were, after all, a product of humanity exploited by mere humans.
What we need now is both encouragement and protection. On the latter we need clear eyes and minds that can understand the difference between creative destruction (a feature of capitalism) and the poison of avarice. Or, the delusional manipulations of the powerful wanting yet more control. Or the corruption of free speech by machine speech.
We should not forget, however, that AI will become over time commoditized. It will be another tool that much of humanity will use. And as widely available machines and software tend to homogenize research and analysis, distinctiveness will be left to humans. Along with imagination.
Ted Turner read the room and then shook it up. Had an AI Bot followed him around, it would have become confused. There will always be opportunities to push ceilings of ingenuity higher and higher. AI will help, but it will not lead.
