I watched a YouTube video recently where the technologist succinctly pointed out exactly what I’m most concerned about in AI, in a demonstrable explanation of why we all should be concerned. Eloquently, he pointed to the ubiquitous S-curve as why this is so concerning. The model, put simply, has three stages: a few early adopters (almost flat), the acceleration phase (curving steeply upward), and lastly maturity (flattening again). He clearly had the same concerns after a “come-to-Jesus” moment.
Clearly, we’re not in the final phase … so where are we?
That’s the truly scary part … personally, I think the curve for AI, in reality, should look more like this:
In complete candor, I believe that the tech giants are losing their grip on AI as it develops. I remember a sci-fi show from years ago called Saturn 3, which “believably” starred a wrinkled, 64 year-old Kirk Douglas on a space station with his hot 33 year-old, blonde supermodel girlfriend (Farah Fawcett). The movie featured an insane AI-powered robot named Hector, that got its mental issues directly from the person who programmed it, as the disturbed visitor (Harvey Keitel) hadn’t considered what would happen when it became sentient. The eight-foot tall robot didn’t know it was insane or that it wasn’t actually alive … very bad things ensued. (spoiler alert: to put your mind at ease, the hot girlfriend survives)
The reports are fairly endless of people using AI from Microsoft and it behaving utterly nuts. This experience is common in almost all other AI systems at some point. Bear in mind that over 7500 US government agencies use Amazons’ AI-powered “AWS“. What could possibly go wrong???
The biggest question is: at what point does AI really take over our lives? And even more scary is the question: will we even notice? Will the government try to regulate/control it? Will they use it to control us and then discover that the power they’ve given it, will be used to control the government itself? You know how adept and prescient the US government is when looking at a few examples like the Postal Service, the China virus response, deficit spending and the illegal alien invasion. The problem is that AI is several magnitudes more complicated.
We don’t have Kirk Douglas to save us from AI, and I really don’t have an answer of what to do as the Genie is pretty much out-of-the-bottle. It doesn’t sleep, go on vacations or use personal time as it matures … is it already too late and we just don’t know it? You have billionaires, who bizarrely for some of them, look literally like the villians in a James Bond movie, financing AI who are thinking their money will protect them.
I have some news for them … their own personal Hector could already be alive, in some lab, somewhere …