AI and You

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is here. Since the public release of ChatGPT in November of 2022, the chatter about AI has reached a fever pitch across the whole of our society.

The release of the first public Large Language Model (LLM) of AI has sparked interest in the promises as well as the risks of AI. From concern about cheating on schoolwork to giving an AI agent the nuclear bomb, the fears have gone viral. This is not even the real risk. General Intelligence AI is not even here yet. It is getting close, but it is still just over the horizon. From the joy of ninth graders everywhere for having their homework done for them to the very real fear of job losses, everyone has their own views on AI.

Generally, most people firmly believe that AI will have little, if any, affect on their lives. Most people see AI as being a helpful tool in jobs everywhere, but not theirs. A minority (early adopters) are excited to try it out and see what it will do for them. However, the promise of AI hasn’t yet even started to be seen.

Recently, in a conversation with Geoffrey Hinton – the Godfather of AI – he said to me that AI is on the verge of demonstrating real, advanced, higher-order thinking skills. He has seen results that show that on three of the skills, AI is already there (he didn’t tell me which skills). Even the prospect of this level of breakthrough is frightening to me. I still refuse to believe that AI will be able to do anything but mimic these skills, but even that has serious implications. There must be something that sets us apart from our inventions and I firmly believe that these higher-order thinking skills (Abstract Cognitive Enablers or ACEs) are it.

What keeps me awake at night is the idea of a world where AI agents will have these ACEs and we become the servants of our own machines. We can develop them in ourselves but few of us do. Imagine with me a world run by machines who, generally, outthink us but lack any emotions that influence and color our thinking. To me, that is a nightmare world where efficiency is the only value.

We have already decided that we live in a society where people are expendable. At least where monetary values are concerned. With emotionless machines and with efficiency as the only value, what are we doing ourselves?

Eight years ago, when I first started looking into this area, estimates regarding the number of people who will be replaced by AI agents were staggering. McKinsey and the World Economic Forum both came out with a number – 900,000,000 – as the number of people who will be displaced by machines by 2035. Nine hundred million! You may furrow your brow and then shrug it off, but that number represents about 26% of the total number of jobs in the world (3.4 billion). That’s a quarter of all jobs gone. However, the Organization of Economic Developed Countries (OEDC) estimated, in the same year, that 1.2 billion jobs would be gone by 2035 – about 35% of all jobs.

That’s a lot of people.

Just this week, the time frame and numbers have been revised (not the only time). The most recent estimates are about 10% of the worldwide workforce are at risk of losing their jobs with the current level of AI (LLMs). By 2035, the number will be about 40% (1.4 billion) of people directly affected with the majority (60% of the 1.4 billion) of those affected living in the developed world.

Why will the developed world be so affected (840 million)? Because AI is a cognitive automation. The developed world has more thinking jobs.

Today the worry is for those who have repetitive cognitive tasks that they do every day. However, the game changes with general intelligence AI. AI will no longer be a repetitive force but a real thinking force. This becomes a threat to those who have never felt threatened before. Why? Because of our failure to live up to our potential.

What is meant by that? This is directly tied to our failure to develop ACEs in our own species. Humans have the capacity to do it, but we don’t develop the abilities. The research is clear and unequivocal. We have failed to develop our thinking.

According to the 2022 Census Bureau’s latest findings, 37.7% of Americans have a bachelor’s degree or higher. That means that fewer than 40% of Americans have tried to learn to think – if everyone who went to university or college set out to learn to think. Even if only 38% set out to learn to think, the numbers don’t look good.

According to Bok, a past President of Harvard University, almost all students entering university fail to appreciate unanswerable questions. They believe that if you find the right person, they will have the answer. By the time these students finish university, about half of them realize that there are real unanswerable questions. That means there are only 19% of Americans who realize that there are unanswerable questions.

It gets worse.

Bok goes on to tell us that half of those who understand that there are unanswerable questions now believe that this means anyone’s opinion is valid. With the internet anyone’s opinion is now easy to find. A mere opinion does not constitute expertise in any subject matter.

Only half of these 19% understand that there is such a thing as expertise when it comes to unanswerable questions. That means that 9.5% of Americans have developed a foundation of thinking to develop ACEs.

It gets worse.

Research tells us that only about 5% of university graduates (1.9% of Americans) begin to actually develop the (supposed) ubiquitous ACE of critical thinking. That is begin to develop, not fully develop. It is estimated that about one quarter of them will be competent upon graduation. That is about 1 in 200 or approximately 0.5% of Americans who are competent at critical thinking.

It gets worse!

Because of a problem called transference knowledge and skills are bounded by the subject matter or discipline in which they were educated or trained. If you become competent at critical thinking in chemistry, you will be competent at critical thinking in chemistry but will not be able to use your critical thinking skills anywhere else.

A few individuals learn to use their skills in other areas (agnostic critical thinking), but it takes a unique combination of circumstances. While learning the skill you must be put in a position where it would be advantageous to use this new developing skill in several other endeavours. This will produce an agnostic critical-thinking person – about 1 in 1,000 (instead of 1 in 200).

About one-tenth of one percent of Americans have agnostic critical thinking skills.

It gets worse!!

There are six other ACEs. I have used a one in ten thousand figure for a full suite of agnostic ACEs, but in my opinion, that is extremely generous. That means that almost every person who becomes competent with an agnostic critical thinking skill needs to develop at least one or two others for that number to be realistic. I’ll let you think this one through.

If AI can be programmed to have all seven ACEs (critical thinking, advanced creativity, hypothetico-deductive reasoning, complex inductive reasoning, abstract rational thinking, advanced logic, and metacognition) and we have got only about 1/10,000 people who can match them, we are in trouble.

There is a solution.

We know how to teach these skills. The Science of Learning has studied this extensively. If these skills are taught, effectively, we could be in a position where about two-thirds of all university graduates could graduate with six agnostic ACEs. However, at this point, universities have other priorities.

Using methods and techniques based on the principles of The Science of Learning, we can develop your thinking that will be at least as good as AI, and (I believe) better than AI will ever be. We can do this together.

If you are one of the lucky few who have a full suite of ACEs, congratulations! You already have what it takes.

However, if you are honest with yourself and realize that you may need to develop your thinking, have. A look at Socelor.com . Let me know if you’re interested and we’ll find a group for you to work with ([email protected] ).