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ChatGPT can deliver an essay, computer code… or legal text, within seconds. — © AFP INDRANIL MUKHERJEE
If the eternal babble about “AI Doom” is any clue, the battle is long lost. It was pre-lost due to the instant acceptance of chatbots as gods.
You may have heard this somewhere before. Thou shalt have no other chatbot. Thou shalt upend thy business and human life on Earth accordingly. Thou shalt fling billions at the Righteous Gimmick. Thou shalt identify thyself as one of the chosen folk by getting a buzzcut, etc.
Humans have large language models, too. Well, some of us do. There’s another way of describing this elegant idiocy:
Bollocks.
If you check out AI dangers to humanity in a search, you’ll find a nice little billion-page cottage industry for writers. That means that paranoia is highly marketable. You’d never guess, would you?
While searching through this dubious mess, I did finally find a sentient article in the Guardian by some guy called Steve Rose on the subject. This article sets out 5 scenarios in which AI might destroy the world. It’s pretty helpful in that way. It’s also helpful in pointing out how many ways AI can be used to make a total dog’s breakfast out of all aspects of basic life.
The article explains how AI is involved in managing job interviews, housing and other sparkling human hobbies. The same basic platforms as the ones that drive you nuts in chats about where your order from six weeks ago now manages whatever, wherever.
This situation is completely acceptable to those epitomes of human intellect, C-level nobodies, whiny executives, fawning investment experts, and AI sales reps. Presumably, these are the brilliant ones who want to be made redundant by chatbots in the next three minutes. Therefore the world is doomed, right?
You can see how good this logic is. “Oh, look! Some new unproven extremely unimpressive first-generation clunky tech! Therefore it should rule the world!” This is the level of intellect pointed at AI basic operations, never mind running the world.
What nobody seems to have noticed is that AI doesn’t have to be doing any of these things. There’s not even any particularly plausible reason why it should.
Let’s try a little scenario of this nonexistent Utopia:
You flutter brightly among the custom squalor. One day you may even have a window. A little smile finds its way uncertainly onto your face. You’re glad the AI is now running your sex life for you and whatsisname. You’re looking forward to having a nervous system of your own. You have a great job as a junior information-sniffer-and-fondler at some endearingly dingy home factory. The kids love story time, especially those spooky stories about when there were people. The cat has for some reason built a starship. Life is good.
You’ve obviously thought this through thoroughly. A whole class of Rube Goldberg technologies that are clearly incapable of doing anything unscripted, let alone doing it well, will run your lives for you.
Well, shoot. Let 8 billion people squeak their butts in a big choir and form a conga line. They-there brain-dead billionaire hicks be a-doing fine, too. Let’s whittle some easily-belittled toxic vittles and chow down on a healthy vacuum of ideas!
Meanwhile…
Are you out of your barely-extant minds? You’re the ones supposed to be deciding how to use this pretentious, sententious, deliberately contentious, load of garbage.
Has it occurred to you that AI doesn’t have to actually run the world? No, it hasn’t.
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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.
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