When the architects of AI raise deeply worrisome concerns about their own products, we should pay attention. These computer geniuses do not know themselves where this juggernaut they are building will take us. They have real fears about its misuse by authoritarians, and about its ability to take on a “life” of its own, completely untethered from any human consciousness. Despite their own published fears, the Titans of AI are leading the charge to propel humanity into the age of artificial intelligence, whether we all want it or not. As they dream and scheme ways to make money and puff up their self-importance, who is in a better position to assess these potential pitfalls? Hmm…I’d say anyone with real intelligence.
I don’t need to be a computer whiz to know for a fact that what’s ahead is not a pitfall that we will trip over and maybe climb out of, it’s a bottomless cliff that we are going to pitch over to an unknown but quite possibly unpleasant future. Unless we can find a way off this runaway train.
Why is it we find ourselves, yet again, on a runaway train? Just like past leaps in the development of firearms, nuclear energy, biological warfare, and organic chemistry, the scientific industrial machine has created a new technology and is rushing to deploy it in the name of human progress, otherwise known as global conquest, despite the obvious dangers not just for them, but for everyone else. This is the very definition of sociopathic behavior, and in every case so far, the ensuing carnage has been undeniable. Are we expecting a different outcome this time?
This kind of “progress,” which in reality is simply the grasping of sociopaths for more power over others, is never really progress for humanity because it is rotten at the foundation. Vaporizing hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese women and children was not progress. Dominating others with superior weaponry is not progress. Lining pockets of the obscenely rich while poisoning land and people is not progress.
In this case, artificial intelligence is pouring into society and filling a massive void created by humanity’s inability and unwillingness to use our own brains. What a shame. But who do we have to blame but ourselves for not thinking, for not being self-critical, and for not working for better options? It is hard to think deeply. It is hard to question authority. It is hard to challenge the status quo. But no one else is going to do it if we don’t. The Titans of AI certainly aren’t going to rock their own boats and risk their precious money and power. It’s up to us to tell them no.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the human brain is pretty darn remarkable. But we have been incredibly lazy. Most people are ignorant of the fundamentals that support their ability to live and breathe. Our ignorance of the natural world – our life-support system – is obscene. But this ignorance is largely by social design. Instead of teaching basic biology and ecology, we have opted to teach kids computer science. What an absolute waste…to study 1’s and 0’s when we could be expanding minds that are the culmination of 4 billion years of nature. If people knew just the basics of biology and other Earth sciences, we wouldn’t put up with what’s happening. Even in higher ed, what little we are teaching biology students in college by way of the natural sciences – how to observe, draw, and classify the organisms around us, how to interpret and analyze interactions in natural systems – much of this should be a routine part of middle school and high school curricula. By the time students get to college, if they have not experienced the real world and been guided to learn from it, they are already at a great disadvantage. I have seen this myself in college students. It’s sad, for them and for all of us.
Still, there is great hope! As with all of the challenges that I have touched on in this blog, there are real opportunities in front of us, staring us in the face, right here in our own community. Here are a few:
- End the data center debacle. No more of them here. Dismantle them now.
- Ditch the computers and tablets, and teach kids basic science. Recruit gifted teachers from the community with practical experience in natural resources to shine the light.
- Start managing forests well and get the entire community on board with the importance of this resource for Washington County.
- Re-build the wood products industry from the scrap-heap that the industry has degraded it to.
- Start growing real food (forget grass seed – total waste of great farmland) and phase out pesticides, starting with the most toxic products.
- Truly restore ecological functions in forests, on farms, and in cities and towns.
In sum, turn the Tualatin Valley into the human and natural paradise that it is meant to be. We have no means right now to challenge politics and industry at the global, federal or even state levels. Power is too entrenched there. The only way is to give our community something worth living for and protecting. Then it will be easy to encourage other communities around us to do the same thing, because what we can create here will simply be that good. It’s time to stop killing each other and start really thinking our way forward, with humanity as our only real concern. This isn’t some utopian nonsense, as the sociopaths would want us to think. It’s our birthright as humans, and it is the only way forward. Everything else is a dead-end. Especially AI.
-George