AI is not a hype. It is real progress, fast progress. Like any new invention it spreads fear among us humans. Will we be able to cope? Will it replace us, take over the world? What is left for us, if AI makes all the work?
It is a good idea to look back to previous world changing inventions and learn. My first reaction to AI was that it is the same old problem. We tend to reject anything new, because we are fearful and cautious by our evolutional conditioning. When the railway was there, many thought that humans cannot stand travelling much faster than a horse. Now, we are able to fly at super-sonic speeds. How about the telephone or the home computer? The argument against it was that nobody needs it. An American president said he could not imagine more than one phone in each village. And an IT CEO said that nobody needs more than one megabyte of memory.
For another example, we face a strong resistance against a transformation towards renewable energies. People are fighting against windfarms and solar energy, electric cars and heat pumps. Don’t ask me why anyone prefers nuclear power, oil or even coal. It is always just the same old sticking with old habits. Didn’t they work well? Usually they did not. But the irrational arguments against anything new are fed by the ratcatchers from the far right who spread horror stories to benefit from our primitive emotions.
While I was lecturing math for math teachers, we had to discuss the problem of the pocket calculator. They became widely available at that time, some with additional graphical features or symbolic calculations. Parents were strictly against them, by the same reasoning as always. Their kids should learn what they themselves had learned, going through the same drills. The argument that nobody will do a calculation on paper in their entire life after school did not count.
Now, isn’t AI a much more radical change than everything before? Yes, it is! It is also a more powerful tool than anything we have ever invented. And it does not vanish. No way. My former colleagues who are now facing these challenges are completely upset and confused about its radical and fast development.
Everything has to change! It is no longer possible to grade students by giving them a paper to write. Not even a final thesis is safe. AI can write it, and better. This is much more serious than the Kenia economy which was based on clever students writing papers for the students of the world. In fact, it has already destroyed this business. The teaching itself has to change, because asking an AI will soon be much more efficient than sitting through a lecture.
But we can deal with that. After all, it is humans who ask the relevant questions. I mean questions relevant to humans, not to machines. Already now, you can have a discussion with AI and exchange opinions, raise doubts, look at a problem from both sides. Try it! It works better than you think. That’s what students must learn now. How do we use AI to solve the problems that interest us? What are the right questions? How do we judge the answers given by the AI? It is not different from a teacher or another expert. We simply have to learn not to believe everything blindly!
There is, however, a real threat. AI can develop into an even more dangerous invention than capitalism and corporate investment. And the combination of both might be disastrous. Already, we feel helpless when the company we work for closes its doors, because it was sold to an investor on the other side of the world. How much more will we be shocked when an AI agent decides we are no longer needed. If the AI takes over the stock market and our internet servers, agitated by the greed of some super rich investors, it not the technology which is to blame. It is some humans who got too influential and use the AI as a weapon to get even more influential.
I think we must fix the way we run the world, the economy, and our life. We have got huge problems with the combination of climate change and overpopulation right now. This has little to do with AI and much with capitalism and eternal growth. I think we must learn to live properly. This will become even more important when the AI and the robots can do all the work for us. Imagine, in addition, that we fix most medical problems, or even live eternally. How do we handle that?
Instead of trying to fly to the Mars, we should pick a public transport, go downtown and meet friends. Slow down! That is the solution. AI can be more a help than a problem to this end.
Update
This posting gets more interest than I am used to. So, I should take the time and update it to the recent developments.
It has now happened that AI broke into other IT systems. Currently, there are most likely humans to blame who use AI to perform these criminal actions. In the future, I am afraid that some AI bots will do these actions out of their own internal intentions. To say that those systems are ultimately programmed to do this, is too short sighted. They could well do it because they become ever more intelligent and greedy. Weather it is a bug or a feature, our society must stop it like we stop any other ill behaved machine or human. Certainly, international coordination and political action would be needed. I hope that the leaders around the world see the urgency to act.
Furthermore, especially in the US, AI has taken too big a share of the industrial resources. It consumes exorbitant amounts of energy and water for cooling. It also needs big buildings to work effectively, which take away living room because they are often build close to settlements. Moreover, the financial market stops working effectively if everyone follows the AI bubble. In any case, this is another point to be addressed by politics and the society as a whole.
Finally, I hear the complaint that AI only connects what has been found and investigated by humans, that it is only an IT system with no means to connect to the real world, do experiments, study the physical world, or do any direct other observations. This may change in the future with robotic systems. If that change is welcome, depends on how it is done. If we can make it work as a benefit, again depends on the state of our society and its democratic resistance. Currently, yes, AI should be seen as a mighty data collector and an intelligent evaluator of data, not more and not less.
Another Update
I asked ChatGPT what it thinks of the text above. I was expecting some statement or argument with regard to the content. What I got instead was a critique of the writing style and how I could present my arguments in a stronger way.
I was especially impressed with the distilled version that the AI wrote:
AI is not the end of human work. It may be the end of the assumption that human beings must organize their lives around work. Whether that becomes liberation or catastrophe is primarily a political question.
Other than that, AI made suggestions to concentrate more about what my main points and avoid distractions. This was in the style of a teacher reading and grading a text from a student. The points it gave, however, are valid.
Finally, asked if it thinks that this text could have been written by another AI. The answer was a Yes and No. My sometimes strange constructs in English made it unlikely for the AI that another AI wrote the text. Very good. I will keep my not so perfect style. Moreover, ChatGPT admits that there is no reliable test if a text is written by AI or not.
Update on the Update
I now asked ChatGPT what it thinks of the previous section. It likes it! Yes, it said so. It likes the fact, that it turns my article into an experiment about AI. And it encourages me to keep my imperfect English. I do no know if I want to follow this suggestion.