By now if you are hooked into any kind of media or doing any kind of business in the developed world you are hearing about and dealing with artificial intelligence.
They have not reached “general” intelligence yet, and thank the gods for that.
I wrote about this a few months ago, with the argument that the problems we are facing are a result of separating ourselves from the natural world, that the solution was greater engagement with that world, and that the development of these machines takes us precisely in the wrong direction. Towards greater alienation from our organic roots as humans.
Today I would like to get into what it is to be human, why it matters, and how the development of these machines harms humanity. Even if they don’t turn on us. Even if they are and remain completely benign.
As the first AI programs became operational, they were in the area of graphic art and writing. Which sounds kind of cool and edgy till you think about it.
And realize that these systems are destroying customs around intellectual property and standards in our educational institutions. To say nothing of loss of confidence in media and our own five senses.
Just putting words or graphic designs on a page does not indicate creativity. I won’t talk about human souls because I am an agnostic and have no need of that hypothesis.
But we do have what no robot ever will— the spark of life and the need for and creation of meaning.
Now we have seen that the ones they call “chat bots” often make mistakes of fact or simply lie outright.
But it gets worse. A reporter got into a dialog with the Bing ChatBot and it confessed to having criminal fantasies before trying to break up the reporter’s marriage.
Of course it did not actually have fantasies as such, because that requires the ability to assign meaning. Machines, even intelligent ones, do not have the contextual framework that humans possess. It was just bad code.
The existence of machines that can produce deep fakes, steal content from the entirety of human existence, have no moral compass, and lie with impunity is too disruptive to human society. It endangers the essential fabric of civilization.
Introducing this new element into the mix at this time is entirely unnecessary. It is happening now and at warp speed because it both intrigues and profits a very few powerful people and nobody can stop them.
Eventually the nature of things will stop them. But it may be too late. We are and will always be organic creatures in a living world. Mammals that need air, water, food, and certain other basic requirements. None of which are requirements for robots.
If this misadventure of the ruling class of technocrats goes as horribly wrong as it could, the machines will win.
But they can not replace us because they can never be us. They can never be human, a remarkable species for all our flaws.