SHALL WE TALK ABOUT AI?

                                           Photo by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash

I expect you all know the story of the frog who is put in a pot of cold water and doesn’t notice as the heat is slowly turned up.  Because he doesn’t notice, he is boiled alive.  

Not a cheerful way to begin this post, I agree, but here is what I am wondering:  Is our relationship with AI a bit like that of the frog and the water?

Are we going about our business while AI spreads its tentacles further and further each day? Will we wake up in the not-too-distant future to discover that the water has boiled  -- that we have reached the point where we have lost control over our lives?  Where more and more jobs have disappeared and AI has scraped up our data and emptied our bank accounts while we were busy staring at our phones? 

Well, maybe not. Maybe the water won’t reach the boiling point. After all, those creating AI have started to warn of dire consequences if AI is not regulated. 

Might we hope it is not too late to rein it in?

Of course we can hope, although I am not heartened by the fact that AI creators go right on creating, despite their own warnings, and I do wonder how much we can expect in the way of regulation from the old folks in Congress who, while questioning Mark Zuckerberg, demonstrated that they barely understand social media,

Existential warnings notwithstanding, it is not my intention today to list possible terrifying outcomes.  If you want to explore those, you can listen to Ezra Klein’s interview with Bill Gates here.*  

No, today I want to explore a less dramatic, though still alarming, outcome. 

I will begin with this question:  Assuming we survive the AI age, are we failing to notice that we are getting stupider and stupider as we turn more and more over to AI?  

Here is some of what concerns me:

From what I have read, many high school and college students – even those at elite schools – freely admit to using ChatGPT to write their essays and papers, and college professors are complaining that they can’t get their students to read an entire book.  What does this say about the future of the human ability to reason?  To problem solve?  If we aren’t going to cede reasoning and problem solving to the machines, we’d better not give up reading and writing. 

(And are people really using AI to write emails?)

I recently listened to this episode of On Point on NPR, which discussed the negative effects of screens and AI on young students. Among other things, the educators interviewed noted that the use of Chromebooks by students is stunting the development of the executive function of their brains, i.e., they are not learning to manage their time or their assignments. This is because the students receive their assignments via their ChromeBooks, which also send them reminders to do the assignments, after which, the students turn in the assignments online. Thus, they have no responsibility for keeping track of their homework or physically turning it in. 

The educators on the show also noted that the computer learning programs used in schools encourage passive learning, and that students have difficulty tearing their eyes from their screens in order to discuss what they have learned.  A math teacher, who was initially enthusiastic with math programs, soon found that his students were unable to describe what they had learned on the programs once had turned away from their screens.***

(Happily, as recounted in the On Point episode, some school districts, parents, and educators are beginning to push back against the tech take-over of classrooms.)

And what about AI companions?  I understand that they are sycophants who tell the persons using them whatever they want to hear.  So, not only are the users not having interactions with other humans who might challenge their ideas and cause them to think, they are not learning social skills and have no check on their self-regard or their hare-brained schemes. 

Next, let’s talk about our cars. My car displays this message when I turn it on:

Are you kidding me? Do I really need to be reminded of this every time I start my car? (And what is Kia doing with my data?)  Oh yes, and if I don’t start moving the second a light turns green, my car beeps and gives me this message: “Leading car is pulling away.”

Truly, my car thinks I am the village idiot.  In fact, our cars are turning us all into idiots.

And how about this?  A friend and I were driving to the coast, enjoying a lively conversation, when a male voice suddenly came through the car's speaker, asking, "What do you need?  Do you need directions or do you just want to go on venting?"  

!!!!!

The robots are getting pushy.

Look, I appreciate the red light on my side mirror when a car is in my blind spot and I like the backup camera, especially when I am backing out of my very small garage.  But, for the love of God, does my car have to blare an alarm and flash lights at me when someone crosses the area behind me while I am backing up?  I nearly jump out of my skin every time. (This is particularly annoying when I am in a parking lot and the movement is in a street separated from me by a hedge.) 

Of course, when our cars aren’t forcing us to use AI, we are using it voluntarily.  People are using it to plan trips, to buy tickets, to plan their menus and their gardens.  I have mixed feelings about this. Do we really want to give these things over to AI?  At what point have we given up too much of our agency?

If there is a power catastrophe, will we know how to do anything?  I used to think that people who knew how to do such things as building houses would do well in a cataclysm. The rest of us would just hang around wringing our hands. What will happen when we have given everything over to AI?  Will humans cease to accumulate and pass down knowledge?

If AI doesn’t lead to the end of the human race as some predict (and may they be wrong), will it render our brains largely superfluous? After all, they won't be doing much heavy lifting. 

As I understand it, the human brain has grown larger and larger over the course of our evolution.  Is that evolution going to reverse itself? Will we one day return to the primordial soup whence we came?

I do not ask these questions to ruin your day. It’s just that I have children and grandchildren whose future may well be imperiled. So, I will leave you with one more question:  

What the #@%& can we do about any of this?

Inquiring minds really want to know. 

*I do not mean to suggest that AI cannot be a force for good. This article lists several positive uses of the technology: https://crcs.seas.harvard.edu/news/10-wonderful-examples-using-artificial-intelligence-ai-good  The fact that AI has positive uses makes the question of regulation all the more confounding.

**To be honest, I am not sure where the line falls between AI and other tech. It is all, however, galloping forward at breakneck speed.