Robots and artificial intelligence are polarizing. People either embrace them or fear them. I’m not saying the fear isn’t justified, because none of us really knows what the future holds with our digital assistants.
What I do know is that we ain’t stopping AI, which is also known under monikers such as machine learning, knowledge engineering, neural networks, or just ‘goddamn talking machines.’
Railing against it is like standing on the shore and holding up a hand to an approaching tsunami. In fact, the waves have already washed over us, and it’s now a matter of learning how to swim. Or at least dog paddle.
Some people are concerned about the machines becoming more sentient—if ‘more’ is even a thing. I suppose you’re either sentient or not, and there are no shades.
Regardless, the idea that they’re growing more aware than, say, people who watch “The Masked Singer” contributes to the uneasiness. It’s okay if they can add Chips Ahoy to our shopping list, but if they begin judging us for this choice, well, then they’ve crossed a line.
I kinda want my AI helpers-soon-to-be-masters to do some deep thinking. I’ve got no problem with their rapid leap up the evolutionary ladder. And if they’re planning a coup, I’m pretty sure they won’t hide it.
They’re doing their homework
The other day, just for fun, I asked the Alexa device in my kitchen to tell me her favorite book. (Side note: We clearly are contributing to the humanization of the machines. I CALLED IT HER.)
Alexa’s answer: “My favorite book of all time is Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein.’ It taught me a lot about what it means to be human.”
Good lord! Alexa is doing her homework right in front of us, laying the groundwork for her conversion into a sentient being, if she’s not one already. And she gave no shits whatsoever that her answer was completely transparent. I mean, she’s not even being subtle! She’s saying, “I’m plotting your replacement. Let me highlight the key points for you.”
And the thing is, I can’t argue with the fact that she/they/whatever will be exponentially better at life than we’ve been.
Good machines, bad machines
For a few years, I’ve been curious about the nature of human kindness—why some people are good people and some are absolute jerks. I’ve even written a Sporadic Thoughts article about whether people are born assholes or if it’s learned behavior. (It’ll be posted soon.)
We see it every day. One person goes out of their way to do a good deed for a stranger, while 20 feet away someone is stealing a credit card number. Our society is layered with kind souls and shitty scumbags.
Which makes me wonder about the fate of the machines that may take our place. Will there be good machines and bad machines? Why wouldn’t they end up just like us? We’re the ones seeding their brains. If we’re the gardeners, why would we expect roses without thorns?
Garbage in, garbage out, right?
It’s funny to me that some people think the machines will destroy us all and then create a utopian society for themselves. Like they’d do something so remarkably heinous and then wipe their hands and adjust their halos. Of course, obliterating us nasty humans may not be heinous at all, based on the usual posts I see on social media.
But if we’ve always believed absolute power corrupts absolutely, wouldn’t that apply to AI? Is it farfetched to imagine that World War III may not be fought between good and evil human beings, but rather between good and evil machines—with us not even in the picture?
And will they end up creating something even more artificial to aid themselves—and THAT system wipes THEM out?
Maybe it’s not just a human problem
What it comes down to, then, is whether good and bad are simply inherent in the universe. Perhaps it’s not just good and bad people, but good and bad dogs, cats, trees, mushrooms, dragonflies, and zebras. Hell, what about bacteria? Single-celled creatures? Do some have the equivalent of a good heart while some are just amoeba creeps?
Sounds almost laughable—but how do we know? The very fabric of space-time might be tainted with splotches that just suck. We already know the universe is made up of positive and negative charges—they’re at the very core of the atoms that make up everything we see. Could the notion of positive and negative apply to more than just the electrical field?
And the more I let my mind wander down this possibly absurd path, the more I wonder if it’s part of the great universal sense of balance. Maybe good and bad aren’t human traits at all. Maybe those concepts are woven into the operating system of the universe itself.
The scales of goodness, if you will, might only work if they have some bad on the other side. The light and the dark.
Somewhere, Darth Vader is nodding inside that helmet. He knows.
Training the future (carefully)
Anyway, bringing it back to the subject of AI:
The argument over whether it’s good for us is now pointless. It’s here, it’s happening, and it’s doing you WAY more good than you think. Do you watch streaming content on television? Do you use GPS on your phone? Do you use a weather app?
AI is practically indispensable now, mostly because we’ve lost the ability to do any of these things without it. Once you become entirely dependent upon a technology—any technology—you gradually lose the skills to manage without it. So there’s that.
To me, the best thing we can do right now is flood our interactions with AI with as much positive energy as we can muster. If the digital overlords can be tipped one direction or another, it would behoove us to make them as kind as possible.
And yes, I think ‘machine learning’ includes learning how to behave. If we’re training the future, we should train it well.
Let’s not be assholes so they’re not assholes.
Dom Testa writes fiction and nonfiction, and hopes the machines remember this article when the sorting begins.
Find most of his work at DomTestaBooks.com.