Artificial Intelligence

~ This article first appeared in The Leader Vindicator newspaper. ~

Several weeks ago Marty, a robot, made headlines by escaping the Giant supermarket where the machine “works”.  Widespread publicity carried an undertone of humor as people metaphorically gave each other the eyeball, clearly communicating how silly these smart machines really are compared to us.

Machines like Marty have been my mental baseline for Artificial Intelligence (AI): Emphasis on “artificial” and disregard for “intelligence”.  I recently finished a very fictional book titled Phantom by Ted Bell that contains a very non-fiction afterward on the subject of AI that has me redefining my understanding of smart machines.

The essay states bluntly that computer technology will eventually yield a machine equal to the human mind.  In short, as soon as a computer is made, it can then be made exponentially smarter, and this can happen indefinitely.  They can catch us.

AI researchers predict that a machine will soon be capable of the multitudinous nuanced calculations, comparisons, and reactions that our brains process and respond to when we’re making decisions.  Then, inevitably, the machine will become exponentially smarter than a person.  Billions of times smarter.  Go and look at someone you care deeply about.  That person will be to a machine what a cow currently is to a human.

What horrifies me is that some of these researchers believe computer superiority to be a natural part of the Theory of Evolution.  They are so bent on their own narrative that they have no problem with the idea of machine “minds” suppressing human minds and, by extension, humanity.  The way they see it, one mind has squelched the previous all along the way so this is inevitable.

I’m not as enthusiastic about the plan, and from my perspective this situation is very evitable: Don’t make the computer smarter.  But we’re supposed to think about the good news: A thinking machine will be the last thing we ever need to invent, because as soon as it exists it will be able to solve every problem we have.  Included among the list of promised resolutions is that issue of hunger.  The machine will make it go away.

My mind steps back a few weeks: Cold wind stung our fingers and suppressed our voices as it whooshed through the treetops while Henry, Dad, and I drilled into the maple tree.  We set the tap and hung a bucket in anticipation of sugary sap, a liquid we collect and boil into sweet, flavorful syrup.  It’s nearly unfathomable, this miraculous surge of life that happens with the change of seasons, and our family anticipates the tradition of tapping trees during a month unfit for tending a garden.  Even Henry, characteristically underdressed for the occasion, was willing to endure chilly discomfort in order to see the ritual through to the end.  And I wonder: How will the machine react to this tradition?  It has solved it all with technological wizardry, so there is no longer a need for such organic interaction.  Will it protect the tree from our sharpened drill?  Will it require the tree at all?  What, then, is left of agriculture?  Of life?

Scientific people worship strictly in the realm of technology, and they propagate a public mindset that believes organic existence is of no importance.  They claim to want to save the world and their solution is to create more technology, which is absolutely ridiculous in the context of a maple tree that requires no technology whatsoever.  The super computer has no need for a natural process.  We think selfishly about what will it do for us, but there is no thought given to what it will do to biology.  What will an unworldly machine do to the chicken that lays the egg?  To the cow that yields beef?

I can see people getting extremely weird in the context of superhuman intelligence.  A machine with all the answers will immediately become a god.  Scientists clearly state that life as we know it will be ripped to shreds when the AI milestone is reached.  I know it is not the cow keeping the person inside the fence because we can think beyond the barrier and they cannot.  Do we want to make ourselves the cow?

Of course, the smartest thing a smart machine can do is hide its existence from those it can outthink so as to avoid resistance.  Sometimes I’m sure it already exists, when I catch myself arguing with Alexa, assuring my laptop that I am not a robot, and ignoring my wife because my phone made a noise.  Furthermore, we see tremendous technological pushback to sensible agriculture in the form of increasingly artificial food.  These trajectories need adjusted back to earth, pun intended.

What I know is a relationship is unquestionably non-digital.  I will value relationships.  I can recognize biological agriculture compared to technological agriculture.  I will adhere to the biology.  I will help raise my kids and I’ll love my wife and I’ll do my work, and if they try to rule the world with a thinking computer I’ll unplug it.