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, fearful and cautious. 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, even 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 help.
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 a 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 for them, 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 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. That is 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 give by the AI? It no different from judging a teacher or another expert. We simply have to learn not to believe everything blindly!
There is, however, a real threat. AI is 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 AI agents decide 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. 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.