Have we given up on Human Intelligence?
This past weekend my wife and I decided to run a few errands. This was on Saturday after a great Friday night spent with my local nephews. We ended up traveling through three different cities through the course of the day and we ran into some quite interesting things.
It seems like just about anywhere you look these days, you are seeing Artificial Intelligence in one form or another. Either people are talking about it, thinking about it, or erroneously calling something AI which isn't.
We were walking through one of the local Sam's Clubs and we came across the little guy in the photo above cleaning the floors. If you have ever seen these things, they are actually quite annoying. They give off this inscenent beep to let you know they are there and they just roam around the store doing their business.
No complaining about overtime, the low pay, or that their talents are being horrendously wasted.
I wouldn't go so far as to call what this device does AI, but I would imagine there is some form of learning involved. Whether it's the route it takes or what objects to avoid. I've only ever seen devices like this in Sam's Club, but I think it won't be long before we see more of them spread across a wide variety of applications.
As you can see, there is still a manual component to this machine, but I also don't think it will be long before that gets phased out as well.
I had a good discussion after publishing this post about how useful AI actually is right now. Personally, I'd like to see AI solving some real world problems. As it sits right now, really only see AI being used to make our lives easier.
Trust me, I am all about making life easier, but some of the applications just feel a bit lazy at times. For example, in that same post I was talking about how people were using AI to respond to questions for a scholarship application.
As a prospective college student, are you seriously telling me you can't write between 150 and 260 words about what career you want to pursue and why?
That's exactly what was happening in the post I wrote yesterday and all I could think was:
what a waste
I saw this YouTube clip of the rapper Will.i.am from Blackeyed Peas fame talking about AI the other day. It's short enough that you can watch it rather quickly at only forty eight seconds. Go ahead....
Did you catch all that? Okay, just in case you didn't, or the video didn't play for you, Will.i.am is talking about how we have been investing all this money into AI lately and because of that we have started to neglect Human Intelligence.
To paraphrase what he says in the video:
machines are becoming more articulate, able to process deep subjects and deep thoughts, and overall better at communication, whereas humans have devolved to memes, gifs, emojis, and Tweets to communicate.
It's a pretty powerful 48 seconds when you really start to think about it.
I'm not saying Tweets are evil and they are going to be the downfall of mankind, but I think it's important we take some time to meditate on that whole idea that one day machines could be better communicators than us. More innovative than us. More human than a human?
It's kind of a scary thought, not in a machines are taking over the world sort of way, but more in a look what we've become sort of way.
I'm not against AI. Really, I'm not. I think there are some big real world problems that AI is going to one day help us solve. I just hope somewhere along the line we don't lose too much of who we are to be able to appreciate it.
I wanted to share this other YouTube clip with you. It's from one of my favorite movies called The Fifth Element:
The basic gist of it goes that these little machines do all sorts of cool and useful things. We create them and we give them a purpose, but at the end of the day there are certain things they can't do, and all of that is for nothing without a little bit of the human element.
I'll admit, I took a few philosophical liberties with that explanation, but I think you can probably see where I am going.
Imagine a world where we invested in each other and ourselves the same way that we are investing in AI.
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I think we we get more general purpose AI, it will be set to work on real world problems. It's just not there yet. At the moment all we have are these more specific purpose machines that are more pattern recognition than actual intelligence. In other words, we'll get there.
Not to be anti-capitalist, but I see what you are talking about as more a consequence of our system than people being lazy. Capital is being increasingly concentrated in the hands of the 1%, the poor are getting poorer, jobs are now getting to the point where even a decent wage might not cover rent alone or only barely cover rent, leaving not enough for food and the other things we need. People are scared, tired, stressed. Star Wars tells us that fear leads to the dark side. That may be true; after all poor people are more likely to turn to petty crimes like shoplifting. But I'd say for the majority it's more true that fear leads to apathy. When a person is stressed to the max by life, just fuck everything, let AI do it, let AI write my post, let AI do my bills, etc. Can't be bothered.
Of course that is simplifying it. But basically I don't think we can put the blame entirely on the people here for being lazy. I think people are generally good, but they are shaped by their environment, and our environment right now is not so great.
That's a good point, but that doesn't mean we need to be complicit. There are definitely things that are out of our control, but there are also some things that aren't. If we don't have the fight left in us to care that's one thing, but if we knowingly choose not to when we can, that is another. I fully agree that it mostly lands on the businesses to invest that money back into people. Which we know they probably won't do.
AI is penetrating in our lives and also in our daily activities but a lot of us are yet to admit that. Some people now prefer to use anything generated from AI even than what humans are doing
It is really crazy and people are losing their jobs
I hope we all wake up!
I think we are going to have to find a happy medium. It isn't going away, but we need to use it purposefully and responsibly.
So much for the janitorial jobs at Sam's Club... The rest of the world is following suit. Machines don't complain, they don't get paid, and don't get sick. What's not to like from their standpoint?
The prospective students still are just plain sad to me... The country seems to be going down the tubes...
The Fifth Element is one of my favorites too. Gary Oldman was amazing in the movie, and that clip shows you exactly why! We should invest in each other I agree, but the greedy in the corporations see profits as much better than people. That's never going to change... Now I'm getting depressed!
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We have been trying to get janitorial positions filled where I work for most of the year. Even when we do find someone the quality usually isn't that great. Something like this wouldn't be so bad. Heck, send some of the immigrants up from the border and let them give it a go.
It’s not going to happen people are way to lazy now to put in the effort.
I have been talking about this for I don't know how long now. We are devolving due to technology, out of convenience. The majority of the problems AI is solving, is around how to maximize profits, by getting rid of humans. Instead of putting all the resources into that, how about putting it into improving wellbeing and health in humans?
I thought you might like this post. I was considering tagging you in it, but I kind of hoped you would just happen upon it. Had you seen that clip from YouTube with Will.i.am before? I was reminded of many of your posts when I first saw it. It's pretty poignant I think.