Futurist: FUD and AI

Fear is an interesting word. It is a four-letter word. However, it is not one of the words that the FCC and other communications groups of various governments prohibit on air. I wonder about that because fear drives so many other behaviors. The reality is fear is a lot more impactful than other four-letter words. Fear can drive action. Inaction, at times, is when someone could act but chooses not to act out of fear.

In some cases, the reality of the reaction to Machine Intelligence is a fear-based reaction. As a longtime software architect, I have spent most of my career fighting with fear, uncertainty, and doubt. FUD is the phrase or acronym people often use to describe why something new isn't good. But fear is also a good thing. It means you understand that the change you are looking at will impact you.

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I remember many years ago, as a teacher, having a student that I thought was incredibly brilliant. The young lady and I talked on recess about something she was afraid of, something she feared. It was the upcoming Indiana State test for 2nd graders. In fact, on the day of the test, she threw up. She was so stressed, so afraid, so scared of the state test that she threw up. We gave her the test one-on-one later, and she scored the highest in the entire grade. My point is that fear is a game-changer. She was brilliant but also scared. Looking at people's reactions to Machine Intelligence today, I see a lot of fear. Some of that fear is righteous. A righteous fear is when you have a legitimate reason to be scared. As they say in the horror movies, don't go into the house alone. There are legitimate fears about Machine Intelligence today.

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Two things come out of this. First, we must understand which of the fears are real. Organizations, governments, and groups have to determine what is real and what is not real fear. Sometimes, fear is not justified. The fear generated by FUD is sometimes not real. A marketable percentage of which one is predominant because it is very situational as to which one is applicable. As human beings, we sometimes make changes because of fear. But we are sometimes driven by a fear of change, forcing us to remain where we are. If we consider the fear around Machine Intelligence today, we see both the fear of change and the fear of change around us.

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That's why I created the you are a process. To create an easy-to-consume aware component so that you, as a learner, could quickly dissipate your fear. Quickly, of course, there is an effort to dissipate fear. CompletingCompleting the entire awareness section of my training program takes six to 10 hours. The difference is how long you stop and consider each of the components of the training model. The other advantage of the model is that once you get it, you only have to do the whole module if there are things that interest you later on that you still need to cover.

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Many people are scared of machine intelligence. I suspect I would be if I were not in the IT world. However, the big fear that impacts most people I deal with is the fear of machine intelligence taking their jobs. I see few jobs taken by machine intelligence in the next two to ten years. I also see many jobs that will be modified and changed because of machine intelligence and become better jobs for people. It is the position we are in right now the analogy I often use of where we are in the world of machine intelligence now is that we are climbing a mountain. When climbing a mountain, your focus is ultimately to get to the top. That was the original goal. Right now, in machine intelligence, we are climbing the mountain. The question will, of course, be, what's at the top?

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In a few days, I will release Aware lesson one of the AURA process. One of the things that it will do is allow people to understand at least why they are scared or afraid. Understanding will help them codify their fear. I don't mean that in the mode sometimes called immersion therapy. In that, you would be throwing into the deep end of Machine Intelligence. Or a pond or body of water, with someone shouting from the shore that you can swim. I mean it rather in a broader understanding. I won't paint a picture of simply finishing my system's be aware training phase or removing your fear. You will suddenly become the biggest advocate of machine intelligence in the world. Instead, the goal is to help you reconcile the fear you have and the reality of the world you are in. Some feared the new way of doing things at every great inflection point. Some were not scared and embraced the new way of doing things. It doesn't make either side smart; it just means that fear is the driver for some people. So, if you are scared of machine intelligence, ask yourself why?