There is nothing that AI can do that humans have not been doing for millions of years. AI can certainly help humans level up their ‘making bad decisions’ game by being faster and more efficient using a deeper knowledge base, but beyond that AI is really just another inanimate tool with no inherent intent or agenda.
What is AI?
The foundation for all AI is previously accumulated data. This is why it’s more often described as machine learning. The information already exists the machine just needs to to acquire it. From there the machine can organize it, verify it, alter it, and/or process it in myriad ways that can lead to decisions, recommendations and/or linked to actions. It’s all ultimately up to the system creator. For this exercise let’s use the term AI in its broadest sense and defer the debate over whether AI is really even ‘intelligence’ for the moment.
First, the creator sends a robot out to read everything on the internet which mostly consists of uncurated, unvetted malarky. This mass of data is then dumped into a big bucket called a database and categorized based on a sort algorithm known only to the creator and probably developed with the aid of an AI system (we’ll get back to the whole ouroboros of it later). An algorithm is just a series of if-then statements glued together with some fancy sounding code that’s the software equivalent of ‘phone a friend’.
Next the user makes some sort of request and the tool responds to that request based on arbitrary rules the creator made up based on personal preference and outside influences be they malicious,benign or both. In a perfect world the rules would be based on transparent organizing principles with equally transparent limiting principles to serve as guardrails.
In any case the system is still just a tool. A hammer can be used to build a house or rob a jewelry store.
Case Studies
If we drill down from the generalized uses of AI to some more specific uses of AI technology the AI hysteria hoax becomes even more apparent.
Facial Recognition
Another example of overwrought pearl clutching is the caterwauling over the use of facial recognition for various nefarious purposes. This allegedly new technological menace causes pathological terror among journalists and civil rights attorneys. Humans have been using facial recognition since the beginning of time. It’s how baby cavemen figured out where to go for lunch. Seriously, a binder of mugshots is facial recognition software. Yet somehow the ACLU believes that using an AI machine to turn the pages faster will turn the world into a dystopian fascist hellscape.
Self Driving Cars
Similarly, humans have used sensors(eyes, ears, etc.) to navigate for millions of years. Although that has worked relatively well there are mistakes, sometimes resulting in death and destruction. Likewise the tech enhanced sensors in self driving vehicles are subject to the same vagaries as human sensors. If there is any empirical evidence that non-human sensors are safer, more efficient and cheaper than human drivers then what is the case against them? Traffic accidents will not end civilization. The Bronze age collapse was not due to runaway chariots.
Catastrophic Unemployment
Technology is more advanced and prevalent than at any time in human history, yet more people are employed than at any time in human history. Technology does not kill jobs, it creates jobs. Yes, new technology may replace your specific job, but not jobs in general. That is why it is incumbent on you to make yourself useful. The definition of useful will evolve during your lifetime. Plan on it.
In the beginning there were two jobs; hunter and gatherer. As technology has proliferated the number of jobs has increased 40,000% (Bureau of Labor Statistics, Sept. 2021). The economy will continue to function
Causes
If the tech itself is not inherently dangerous and human nature hasn’t changed and isn’t going to change then what is driving the always tiresome ‘end of the world’ trope. There are two powerful and predictable business models at play.
First is the standard media company business model:
Make words and pictures
Use the words and pictures to draw a crowd
Rent the crowd to advertisers
Words and pictures about scary robots out to destroy the world are a consistently dependable way to draw a crowd which of course positively impacts the crowd rental revenue from advertisers. Ironically, the scary robots themselves are helping generate the words and pictures about how scary they are which benefits the human creators who made the scary robots to begin with. Let that sink in for a minute (told you we’d get back to ouroboros).
The second driver of the current hysteria is good, old regulatory capture. This is the tactic whereby large corporations conjure up an imaginary threat knowing the feckless government will implement nonsensical, unenforceable regulations written by the businesses lobbyists. The sole purpose of said regulation is to create barriers to entry to any competitors who might threaten the government created monopoly. Of course the government could just skip the creation of dozens of new corrupt government agencies and just require a disclaimer stating that all AI responses are merely the product of some robot’s imagination.
R-E-L-A-X
AI will not destroy civilization. Humanity will continue muddle along as always with the largest group of people continuing to be gullible and fearful, a smaller group benefitting from that fear and gullibility and the smallest group doing what needs to be done; sorting on honesty, courage and accountability.