AI - Some Implications

AI is not a species, a sentient being, a self-conscious entity; humans are, computer programs aren’t. AI is artificial intelligence – it is not a living intelligence, that is the domain of people. Any ‘so-called’ intelligence that is accrued by AI is due to the intelligence of people. And yet we talk as though AI were a person, a being. How?  By referring to ourselves as human as though we were somehow a separate species, alongside AI. This is not surprising considering that humankind is variously looked at as a scrouge, a pariah in the natural world, just another evolved species (maybe not even better than any other), certainly not unique, imaging a creator. We are seen as merely another species with no more rights or privileges than any other, including AI; it is strikingly contingent. If you turn the power off AI is nothing, whereas we would survive and figure our way forward.

AI is a vast, in some instances terrifying, project/program, but that is what it is – something programmed, non-human. If AI is considered beneficial, it is because it is programmed, if AI is considered dangerous  – same thing. We are the compromised creator, it is the imperfect creation, and if there is a snake in the garden guess who put it there?

When we infuse or project non-animate objects with a supposed personality, or identity, we have done no better than those that make idols. An idol is a piece of wood, a stone, that is carved representationally, an image of and supposed conduit to the gods. We do the same when we think of AI as a being/sentient. We make a thing godlike when it is only ever a thing - we project being onto non-being. And like idol worshippers we are thereby trapped and minimised. 

Nobody seems to know where project AI is going, which is alarming. A professor who was at the leading edge of Ai research for a global tech company has warned of its future and walked from both the company and the research. He regrets his initial enthusiasm, wishing parameters were imposed much earlier on. It may be too late because knowledge is voracious, and we’ve never been inclined to show restraint. On a 60 Minutes episode (USA) a senior executive of a major Silicon Valley tech company looked like a deer in the headlights when quizzed as to where AI is going or could go. He admitted they have no idea and stated that we would learn from it and figure out ways to control or limit it. What staggering hubris that we would think because a thing can be done it should be done. Human nature will ensure any good proposed, somewhat naively,  will be outstripped by dehumanizing applications. If no ethics or caution drives the potential reach of artificial intelligence, it will run amuck.

And yet we plow on as if AI will magically sort itself out, as though it has a conscience, an ethical impulse.  This is willful ignorance on our part. AI is no more than an image of its creator, and that should engender caution, even fear.