Is AI Really The Problem?

Alan Turing defined the test for true artificial intelligence in 1950, so the concept has been around for quite some time. And if you don’t know who Turing was it would be worth your time Googling him; essentially if the British government had known he was gay in 1936, the Allies would have lost the war.

While I wouldn't claim to be an AI pioneer, I did work in the development of commercial tools using AI from 1995 until 2002, a time of tremendous growth for this area. And we developed some amazing ‘stuff’ (technical term) delivering ￡100s millions of extra profits to our clients.... annually! IN addition we not only maintained peoples' jobs, but created many more.

Often the limiting factors for us were the speeds and capacities of the hardware available, and those have changed beyond all recognition in the last 21 years; in 2002 we couldn’t even dream of the internet speeds we have today.

So now we are being told that AI may be responsible for our extinction in the not-too-distant future. It is as if we have created a monstrous sentient being that has turned on its creators.

Rather than terminator-type robots, the argument seems to be that large groups of people can be swayed through the use of AI to believe things that are not true, and then they will act accordingly.

How might AI do this? Some AI systems have been developed to lurk in the background, picking up data about individuals to use as hooks, then placing messages of all forms so that these same individuals might absorb them subliminally.

Certainly the evidence seems to be there with the Brexit vote in the UK, and Trump’s election in 2016. But in both of those cases there were many people who did not believe the hype, who were not persuaded no matter the level of media bombardment and mis-information they faced, it’s just that on these occasions they formed the minorities. But why didn’t these people fall under the same spells as their peers? ?

IMHO it is down to education, or rather the lack of a proper education, one that includes the teaching of common sense. Increasingly we are producing generations of young adults who lack the ability to discern between fact and fiction, who will become fired up and fight for false causes.

Moreover, this decline in educational standards has been going for some time now and I suppose there has always been a section of our society who form ‘the baying mob’, undoubtedly there are any number of all ages with these same mindsets, who cannot be bothered to check facts for themselves, or simply don’t know how to validate other people’s statements, and are all too ready to accept what is being said and act on it. But they didn’t tend to be in positions of leadership, and when it comes to democratic countries, we get the leaders we vote for.

In my book, TJ’s War, I show through the true story of one man’s experiences during WWII, that entire populations have been persuaded to go to war on the directions and whims of just a handful of individuals; 80 years later nothing much seems to have changed.

Propaganda wasn’t new in WWII either; it was Aeschylus who said, “In war, truth is the first casualty”, and he died over 2500 years ago.

I agree that AI has been deliberately used to influence electors and elections, but not autonomously – this was all done under the control of unscrupulous human agents. Just like nuclear power, AI is a force for good that can be employed by bad guys, but in the case of AI it only works if people switch off their brains.

It is the increasing lack of discernment, and the willingness of even senior leaders to follow others like sheep, that is the real threat to our civilization – this is how we may sleep walk into WWIII.

'Science' derives from the Latin word scindere, meaning to incise or separate, 'scepticism' is a related word. We, especially those of us in so-called first world countries who claim to revere science, need to re-start thinking for ourselves, we need to restore the idea of common sense and be more analytical before we are all completely cancelled.

#tjswar

[You can get a copy of TJ's War here https://www.amazon.co.uk/TJs-War-Love-Survive-World/dp/B0B783MS6C]