According to experts, AI is the greatest force for good ever devised, or, it is the worst curse ever created by humankind. The central question seems to be: have we developed a monster that today holds promise and tomorrow guarantees destruction? In other words, have we stumbled into a satanic contract that promises us everything while giving us nothing? The experts who paved our way into all this are not sure.
They do agree that AI is incredibly powerful and it is getting more powerful by the minute. It learns as it goes.
What used to take five months can now be computed in five minutes. Yet the warning label states “not all data is reliable in this, the development phase.” All I know is it showed up (uninvited) in my email, offering to help me write better emails, then promptly misunderstood my meaning, then published nonsense. After this it was tough to find my original memo.
Maybe AI can help me fly to Mars someday, but for now, I’ll settle for spell check and a calculator. Meanwhile there remain looming implications that the experts either ignore or minimize.
Do I have a choice? Is AI tracking me right now even as I write?
Will AI warp my brain and my soul? Will the machine lull us into harmonic compliance? With no reliable moral code will we eventually submit to the machine’s ideas about crime and punishment?
Will the U.N. make us less Islamophobic with the push of a button? Will Sharia become the law of the land? Will AI take away fear? Will it have the power to declare war?
What about a world run by robots without conscience?
Been there. Done that. It’s called the federal government. And finally . . .
George Bailey need not bother Dad anymore. AI and the experts will know what to do.
