The AI bluff and the brighter future that awaits us
The much exploited cliché that AI will come and replace us is in the mouth of every tech company lead but is that just a way to drive shares price up or there is a deeper aspect.
Human mind mystery
The first objection that comes to mind is well if AI and the related jargon is meant to replace us it presupposes that science has wholly investigated and mapped the human consciousness. To any person with even the slightest interest in the topic that sounds utterly preposterous. Not only haven’t we solved the mystery of the basic nature of our own self-awareness, creativity and language but the prospects of progress look grim. The modern paradigm implied that our thoughts can be reduced just to transmissions of neurons but if we try to look for a concrete evidence we will be disappointed.
What you code is what you get
One professional trick which you won’t hear exposed explicitly outside the IT community is that they try to convince the public that the code can surpass the initial setup. Well, the ivory tower can be destroyed with the plain fact that all the output is equal to its input. That is to say that the final result will not create a totally new feature or behavior. One has to be totally deluded or influenced by the tech media machine to believe that the machine can come up with something original and insightful.
Calculating the universe
It is beyond doubt that computers improved our ways of dealing with numbers – we can now faster calculate deviations, assess theories and make prognostic analysis. But if the AI is expected to substitute us in making crucial decisions we will need much more. If we take for example the arrival of a new theory, drawing from history (Kuhn) we realize the process involved intuition and challenging of the accepted dogma. Simple, repetitive actions as on a production line are definitely within the capabilities of robotics but who will be in charge of gathering the information, finding the correlations, as well as suggestion new alternatives?
Dangers of totalitarian state
Once we allow the omniscient eye in our private life, the option to roll back to our freedoms is getting more and more distant. We all know of the experiment when one says repeatedly a word and on the next day you will get the appropriate advertisement, even though you have never googled it. Although, that seems intrusive it will look like a fairy tale compared to the military complex eager to targeting individuals from a distance. I know this sound far-fetched but there are stories circulating for AI aided assassinations and we have to stay on the alert.
