Fixing The Culture – Part 4 – Do We Really Want Computers And AI Thinking And Doing For Us?

Here are some good thoughts and questions regarding the expanding and increasing presence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in our world. Can we trust it? How should we best use it? How can we control it? What should we do with it? There are serious ethical issues regarding its rise and use, along with the benefits that it can provide for life. Will the law of “unintended consequences” come into play - as it nearly always does? Something that is meant for good turns out to be used for something bad or evil - almost inevitably. If nothing else, will it tend to make us lazy?

Many years ago, as a senior in high school, I was assigned to read a thought-provoking book by Alvin Toffler entitled Future Shock. Two of the more memorable takeaways were:

1. We would experience “over-choice” as consumers due to increasing specialization of products, more sophisticated marketing efforts, and consumers’ desire for more choices as they became more affluent. As anyone who has cable or satellite television or goes grocery shopping can attest, that prediction was spot-on.
2. We would experience a significant increase in leisure time as technological marvels took over more and more of the workload. Until recently, this prediction has not panned out so well. But the recent advance to the forefront of artificial intelligence (AI) might change that, although not in the direction Toffler predicted. Instead of people holding onto 20-hour-per-week jobs as he envisioned, their jobs may just be eliminated.

A more disturbing question is this: At what point will the AI monster become too smart for mere men to handle? Are we closer to that time than we realize?

Maybe part of my trepidation on this is from watching the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey in my impressionable teen years. The film, which was made in 1968, featured an onboard “supercomputer” that could talk. The computer, named “Hal” (an acronym), became too smart for his astronaut “buddies” and went from a neutral assistant to a malevolent force, due to its amazing ability to “know” what the astronauts were about. That was a chilling feature of the film and certainly ahead of its time. Perhaps another more current trepidation is the idea of sharing the road with cars that drive themselves.

While I could never envision purchasing a car that did the driving for me, I do have a car that will parallel park itself if allowed to do so. It also features an onboard display that controls almost everything besides putting the vehicle in motion. Unfortunately, the display screen has failed on several occasions, rendering us almost helpless regarding GPS navigation, climate control, radio, defrost, and rear window defogger, etc. 

At this point, it might be instructive to reflect on a few of the caution (if not full-blown red) flags regarding the potential for over-reliance on AI:

1. How are teachers/professors who assign term papers ever to verify how much of the work is the students' and how much was purloined from AI sources? 
2. Related to the first one is man’s natural tendency toward laziness – if the computer or robot can do it and I don’t have to, then so much the better. We’ve already been seeing this for years as customer service representatives will fall back on “the computer is down” or “the computer did it” to absolve themselves of responsibility.
3. Who is responsible for ensuring that AI is programmed to provide accurate and unbiased information? We’ve already seen numerous examples of AI responses that were off the mark factually. We’ve also seen others that showed the political leanings of the programmers (mostly left, of course). 
4. Using AI, there is an increased risk of improper disclosure of personal, sensitive, confidential, or proprietary data, presumably because AI may not always make the right decisions regarding disclosure.
5. AI will cost companies and organizations a lot to implement and maintain. They will expect a significant return on that investment that may or may not materialize. As an aside, if part of that return involves replacing human workers with robots empowered by AI technology, then President Trump’s dream of bringing thousands of manufacturing jobs back to the USA will be thwarted, at least to some degree.
6. AI along with robotics could increase costs for companies and the environment, given the enormous amount of computing power needed to implement AI, and the associated increase in energy costs.
7. Finally, there has generally been a tone that is either ignorant of God or outright hostile toward Him. That, unless it changes, does not bode well for the spiritual well-being of upcoming generations.

So, then, what are we conservatives to do about the AI revolution that, in some ways, is already here? Is it too late to divert its course from a path that looks fraught with potential disasters ahead? As with so many other issues in these crazy times, vigilance and speaking up when needed will be critical so we can make sure our voices are heard, especially when it appears that AI is headed in an especially dangerous direction.