Preface
The world we live in has a few basic rules. They’re not always obvious, but if you’ve been keeping up with global trends, you’ll probably see them. One rule is that there’s always a set of “trending concepts” being promoted by corporations, countries, investors, and the tech world in general. This set of “trending concepts” updates from time to time. New concepts replace old concepts, and some concepts get updated.
One of the most popular concepts today is AI, or artificial intelligence. People don’t stop to think about it much, and many tech companies jump on the bandwagon with something related. They’re trying to be on the cutting edge of the latest buzzword, which is understandable.
It’s not new to us. It’s just a bunch of trendy buzzwords that confuse a lot of people who don’t know much about technology or our language.
Our language and some basic definitions
If you care about the human language, if you take the time to notice the little things, you’ve probably noticed by now that most human language is pretty inaccurate, pretty general, and pretty comparative.
Even if you haven’t yet, take a moment to examine the definitions. You’ll likely have some immediate questions about it all.
Intelligence, according to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, is either:
Intelligence – according to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary intelligence is either
- the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations or
- the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one’s environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria
You have to consider another definition to draw a picture here:
Consciousness – Again, some options but according to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary Consciousness is:
- the quality or state of being aware especially of something within oneself
- the state or fact of being conscious of an external object, state, or fact
There are a few more suggested definitions, but I think we should stop here and ask whether intelligence and consciousness are physical traits at all. Do we have a clear understanding of what they are and how they work?
Even by reading the definitions, we can say we don’t have a good way of explaining these concepts. We know they exist and we’re curious about them more than anything.
I’m guessing that if you’re an intelligent person, you’ve already tried to search the internet for AI definitions and found out (like I have) that there is no one definition that everyone agrees upon. Every computer scientist has their own take on what AI is.
Since I’m known by my closest friends as someone who’s into technology, I’d say it’s about “collecting and analyzing large data sets to help computers communicate better with humans.”
The most vague definition would be something like “trying to teach computers to imitate the human thinking process.”
I have a question about the second definition. Are we saying that all humans use the same thinking processes? And the answer is a resounding no. If we say that we do, it might suggest that in any given real-life situation, all humans would get to the same solution or answer.
But we know that’s not true!
What do I have against AI?
To be honest, I’m a big fan of AI.
People like me, who are considered digitally savvy, actually benefit quite a lot from things like AI. If you ask content creators, curators, software developers, DevOps people, or digital marketers about AI, they’ll probably tell you that it helps them with simple, everyday tasks that would otherwise take way more time.
Let’s say you’re in my line of work. You could go to perplexity.ai or chatGPT and ask for a connection string to MongoDB from Python. It’d be a lot easier to find the right solution than to go to Google or Brave and wade through tons of irrelevant search results.
A bad example of AI in action would be a lawyer asking an AI engine to put together a defense for a case they’re working on. I heard of a real case where the judge told the lawyer to go back to work and come back with something not machine-generated.
The judge could actually tell!
In the world of content creation, there are other tools built with AI that could actually help us with content creation of all types (but not writing it per se). There are also proofing tools like DeepL Write, plagiarism checkers like Copyscape, image generators like Dall-e, and so on. If you wish to contribute to as a developer, you can try the huggingface community.
What is risky with AI?
In an interview I heard philosopher and linguist Noam Chomsky speaking about the first thing he considers dangerous about AI, he said the spoken and written language are first to be at risk.
Even before AI, most of us have already been noticing the slow decline in speaking and writing, often commenting about it and moving on with a faint sigh.
It is very easy to understand why Noam Chomsky would say that AI is a real danger to our spoken and written language, an engine that would speak and write for us, why would humans even bother with any language?
The brilliant human brain is capable of achieving so much but most of us are easily attracted to lazy habits like letting someone else decide for us, invent for us, move for us, communicate for us.
Do you see it?
If you read it all, you might be surprised by what I conclude from all I wrote above. Our human brain is capable of so much, it has so much potential, and yet, most of us choose to be lazy. We don’t practice what we want to improve in. We let others decide for us. We make machines do work for us. But the truth is, we’re not working to improve mankind when we adopt and promote laziness.
There’s nothing wrong with saving some time on some work. But when we become lazy with food, reading and writing, the spoken language, breathing, bringing up our children, or making peace with ourselves, we can’t keep telling ourselves that we’re busy building a better humanity. A better humanity would be working hard to practice what you cherish in life, not letting someone else do it.
Stay educated,
Aviram
