Artificial? Intelligence?

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     Like most of you, I’ve not given much thought to the recent fears that advances in artificial intelligence might eclipse our own. Much of this is just our audacity, inflating our self-image (as if such an eclipse would require some giant leap!). Some of it is a mildly distorted view of what our own intelligence has achieved. The highly gifted octopus, the clever jackdaw, and the intellectually sophisticated chimpanzee have not—together—extinguished a single species nor polluted a square meter of the planet.

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     What, exactly, is the threat that advances in AI might supersede our own intelligence (assuming, of course, we could measure it)? Nearest I can figure, it would just put its inventors, producers, and sustainers out of work, or transform them from scientist-entrepreneurs to minions. But we might not notice.

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     Nevertheless, the mild controversy (or dire warning—depending on your level of anxiety) has occasioned me to re-visit the concept of human vs machine domination. We are already pretty well under the control of technology. Our relentless attention to our iPhones mimics a surgical attachment: people are walking into walls glued to their screens. For many of us, Alexa is an essential companion, maybe even a disturbing obsession. And there are intelligent apps for almost everything else.

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     For those of us retired from the workforce, the prediction that 80% of work will be improved or replaced by AI might be cause for optimism. For those now entering the workforce, it is frightening. There’s hyperbole at both ends: new technology seldom achieves the level of a panacea, and almost never merits draconian censure. We will continue to have control over the AI we turn tasks over to unless we engineer it away. There’s the rub: we generate new technology faster than the wisdom to deal with it.

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     What we really need, faced with so much uncertainty, is protection from hyperbole. What we need is parental AI control for adults. Maybe there’s an app for that.

 

Ron Wetherington