AI is Getting Smarter But We're Not
Another new technology is about to have its way with us
Don’t worry about artificial intelligence. Yes, it could conceivably destroy the Earth, or merely take away the stuff that makes life worth living. But human beings and their free market will prevail, and everything will be all right.
We’ve got it covered.
No, we don’t.
Since when has our vaunted strategy of “Leave it to the free market, it’ll be fine” ever worked? Certainly not with recent new technologies.
How about the Internet? We left that to corporations who helped create a dandy playground for racism, fraud and idiocy. As yet, in balance, has the World Wide Web fostered much of anything better than was out there before, in any sense other than convenience?
Yeah, there are a few things. But were they worth it?
After all, the most free and advanced media on the planet has been largely replaced by promoters of listicles and crackpot conspiracies.
Everybody has a phone with a super-duper enyclopedia in their pocket, which tells people they don’t know everything about them.
Then there’s Uber and its ilk, which replaced regulated taxicabs with uninspected cars driven by people with mysterious last names and which charge whatever they want, depending on time of day and whimsy.
How about Airbnb? It was supposedly just a way for people to make a few bucks off a spare bedroom. It’s grown into a monster helping destroy what little urban affordable housing still exists.
Autonomous vehicles aren’t close to being safe, but they’re still in production.
Then there’s crypto. It was mainly a way for drug dealers and other miscreants to avoid the perils of money-laundering that grew into a way for people to make profit out of nothing.
I hope that’s working out for you guys.
So, if past is prologue, will unregulated AI be in the control of anybody responsible? Or even anybody irresponsible?
It has already gone where angels fear to tread, and warned against treading. It’s been connected to the Internet.
One unregulated all-powerful entity has joined with one with similar prospects. So how long until AI works entirely under its own guidance, and does whatever it wants wherever it wants in whatever way it wants?
Five or ten years. Maybe.
We won’t have to wait that long for some other awful results. If unrestricted, ChatGPT and things like it may make high school and college essays things of the past within a year.
New novels will soon be written by dead authors. Other new novels will be written by living authors when they’re not looking.
Louis Armstrong will play his horn again. Irving Berlin will write some new songs. Amy Winehouse will be back from rehab, scarier than ever.
More and more commercials will be done with animation but without benefit of animators.
Much of new pornography will be created without human participants by 2024. If you thought porn gave young people unrealistic expectations, you ain’t seen nothin.’
In a year or three, assassin robots will stalk their targets over the ground and through the air, and get the job done without fear of retribution to their masters.
We obviously need lawmakers, such as they are, to regulate AI.
The members of the U.S. House of Representatives should get on the case right away, as soon as they figure out how they can vote on a bill again.