As a life-long fixer and teacher, I feel that, if I do nothing to try to help the world understand a danger we face, it will haunt me.
What danger, you say?
As Brian Klaas wrote in his book Fluke
".... the printing press, newspapers, radio transmission, and TV broadcasts all expanded the number of people who could consume information. The internet is fundamentally different. It's a revolution that has, for the first time in history, created an explosion in who can create widely disseminated information. It's a fundamental shift: from few-to-many communication to many-to-many communication. Ideas, even false ones, spur action, and billions are now being exposed to new ideas at a rate greater than has ever before existed."*
While the internet changed everything, artificial intelligence (AI) is accelerating the change. At one time seeing is believing was a good rule. That is no longer true with AI and its ability to create false video and soundtrack. We have the choice to either check the source or risk being mislead.
I don't know how, but somehow we as a society must sell a new fundamental knowing to ourselves and our children:
Truth and reality can only be found in first-hand experiences, and more, that experience cannot be coming through some electronic device. If we read it on our computer, or see it on a screen it could be, likely has been made up, edited, or severely altered by somebody or something.
George Carlin said:
"[It’s] not important to get children to read. Children who wanna read are gonna read. Kids who want to learn to read [are] going to learn to read. [It’s] much more important to teach children to QUESTION what they read.Children should be taught to question everything. To question everything they read, everything they hear. Children should be taught to question authority. Parents never teach their children to question authority because parents are authority figures themselves, and they don’t want to undermine their own bullshit inside the household. So they stroke the kid and the kid strokes them, and they all stroke each other ..."**
Question what you read or see online or in the media. We can change the future, but only if we take time to question things.
*p.103 FLUKE - CHANCE, CHAOS, AND WHY EVERYTHING WE DO MATTERS; Brian Klaas, Scribner, 2024
Hi Halle
ReplyDeleteYou might also find this article interesting
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-ai-needs-more-polymaths-philosophers-chad-woodford
The Internet and AI is a reflection of us- our being in the world as the way we see ourselves. So I presume you agree it’s’ currently both a negative and positive force likely to continue as such?
So long as we allow the titans of technological power to float above responsibilities for content, particularly under the guise of freedom so the risks are magnified. That is up to each generation to become more involved at every level of governance.
In reality the existential dangers have always been there, in the distortions, propaganda, false information and so on long before the internet and AI but today with added impetus given the ease of usage as you identify.
But machines and machine learning in or any form cannot in my view become human with human emotions. So I believe talk of human consciousness as in AI is in my view a gross exaggeration. That depends on how you define consciousness of course.
To reiterate, I believe the danger is to see it as something separate as to ourselves. Rather, at every level we need to be part of the process. Just as alarm bells signalled when the printing press first took hold, where information became more widely known this time around the same revolution is before us but risks for bad outcomes greatly magnified.
Time for the Polymaths and philosophers to answer your questions.
As long as there are humans, there will be tools of greater and greater complexity. For me, it isn't about whether the new tool is good or bad 'in itself' but whether it is being used to promote falsehoods or not. It is the person who uses the tool that will determine the answer to that question.
DeleteWhat I fervently desire is not an end to new inventions, but education of those who are on the receiving end of media, whether it is a Greek Tragedy, a book fresh off the press, a vaudeville show, etc.. or the latest AI created video showing your favourite actor telling you how to vote in the next election. We must all be aware of the ways we are being manipulated.
If, at some future time, AI becomes self-aware, we will need to be educated about that too.
The creator and the consumer must both know what is really going on.