“Turn around” said Lucy. “Turn around and go back to the
route”.
It was in 2005. We were driving a rental car on some off-piste forest road in Washington State, towards the trailhead of a mountain we wanted to hike.
“Turn around and go back”. I sensed some anger and dispair
in Lucy’s voice. We switched Lucy off and continued on our way.
For many doomsayers, of which the UN has many, Artificial
Intelligence (AI) and especially the variety that talks to you, herald the end of
the world.
Needless to say, we made it safely back from the mountain, in 2005. We had a wonderful time without relying on Lucy’s navigational skills.
*****
What is intelligence?
For understanding artificial intelligence, it is
helpful to reflect on our understanding of human intelligence. Leaving things such as ‘emotional intelligence’ aside
for just a moment, the following comes to mind:
- Memory, or knowledge. The more you know the cleverer you are. What matters is not only the amount of data that you remember, but also how fast you can retrieve such data. I have googled ‘development’ and within 0.37 seconds the internet returned 13 billion documents. Beat that!
- Logic, or analytical capacity, which is the ability to draw correct conclusions. The economist and psychologist Daniel Kahneman has brilliantly researched and described the many biases that cause people to arrive at false conclusions. Moreover, machines can juggle many more variables simultaneously than our little brains could ever handle.
- The recognition of patterns, or learning. Face-, fingerprint- or license plate-recognition are mundane examples. Pattern recognition allows us to predict what is coming, such as forecasting the weather. Pattern recognition allows the management of huge data sets. Computer-aided design or diagnosis are almost as old as computers themselves.
Computer networks have more memory, have more analytical capabilities, are more likely to be free from bias, and are better at learning than humans. Their brains are bigger, faster and better.
Does this frighten you? We all know people who are smarter than us and we don't worry about it. What is it that worries you about artificial intelligence?
The Dangers of the New
Almost any significant innovation was accompanied by resistance and a public outcry denouncing its dangers. In the early day of the automobile, a flagman waving a red flag had to run in front of the automobile to warn people, clearly defeating the purpose of vehicular traffic. By now, the world has road signs and speed limits.
Many people fear that the powers of AI could be misused to harm other people. Pitchforks, machetes and pangas were designed as garden tools; they have been misused, like vehicles, to kill other people in numbers that you and I would not want to know.
And after all, AI is not that new. Wikipedia dates the birth of AI back to 1956, when it became an academic discipline.
Jobs at risk
The most common fear is that AI makes jobs redundant, especially the jobs of people like
yourselves who can and do read this text.
Throughout history, we have readily embraced any device that relieves us of physical labour, such as cranes that lift stones, tractors that plough large fields, or dishwashers. Replacing strenuous physical labour with machines increases overall productivity and makes things more affordable.
Digitalization has also been going on for many decades, relieving
accountants, scientists and UN officials from the tedium of manual calculations
and repetitive tasks. The slide ruler in my selfie is the last analogue
calculator before it was replaced by the first digital scientific pocket calculator, made by Hewlett Packard, 50 years ago.
In the past, miners and steel workers have protested in vain against the closure of mines or car assembly lines. Today, the digitally literate, the well-educated and the intelligentsia are panicking, claiming that the world really is in trouble, because this time it is their jobs that are going to disappear.
As always, there will be new jobs. The days are gone where one stops learning at age 25 and continues
doing what one has always been doing, for the next 35 years.
My advice: when everything is done by machines, sit back, relax and
enjoy. The 4-day-week is already becoming a reality in some parts of the world.
Arts and creativity
I also can feel the anxiety within the creative community. Images can now be created at the push of a button. To ‘photoshop’ your pictures is considered good form and nothing to turn your nose up at. Cartoonists, gaming creators, or photographers are afraid of becoming superfluous.
Our understanding of art is changing – as it changed from the cave paintings of the Neanderthals, to Michelangelo and to Andy Warhol. Some AI-generated images are more attractive than Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Only because we admire the artistic-creative process involved in painting the Mona Lisa, will it remain one of the most important and enduring paintings ever done, while the AI-generated beauty will instantly get lost in cyberspace.
Fake News
Did you always believe everything that was published or is available on the internet? Check out, below, the image of the earth.
Conspiracies and fake news are not an invention of AI. People have been lying to the media or telling only half of the story, have been manipulating images, and deceived others for centuries. Strictly speaking, any Hollywood movie is a fake.
A few years ago, it may have taken an expert one day to manipulate a photograph to show Trump embracing Kim Jong-un. It takes AI six seconds to generate the image below - or a minute for a more realistic-looking photo-type image.
Feelings
Artificial Intelligence is full of ill-will, will take over the world and enslave everyone, or at least force everyone to eat hamburgers from McDonalds. This, or something
similar, is another prevailing view echoing through cyberspace.
In a recent study, AI displayed more empathy when conveying bad medical news to patients, than real doctors. I didn’t read all the fine print of the study, but possible reasons
are obvious: AI is not stressed out by being overworked; AI doesn’t have to think about the children that need
to be collected from the kindergarten; AI can be trained to remember at all
times the best form to convey bad news; and so on.
Does AI have feelings of its own? Does AI experience romantic moments or episodes of grief? Does it associate a certain smell or the rustling of the wind in the leaves with particular moments of happiness? I doubt it.
The end is near
The end of this essay, that is.
We have devised tools that have a bigger
memory, analyse more logically, and learn much better than we humans do. We
should be happy.
Artificial Intelligence operates as a tool or a tool extension of human
intentions and capabilities, and it does not possess agency in the sense that
it has its own desires, intentions, or consciousness. It is a tool created and
controlled by humans to assist with various tasks and functions.
The above sentences in italics are not mine. They are written by
AI, and I endorse what is being said.
Instead of seeing mischief around every corner, let us harness the powers of AI. Perhaps Artifical Intelligence can finally achieve what humans with their limited brain capacity, their forgetfulness, their bias, their tardiness and their egoism were unable to accomplish:
- To treat everyone equally, without prejudice and bias;
- To put the interests of humankind over narrow personal or nationalistic interests;
- To solve conflicts without resorting to violence;
- To save the planet.
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