Artificial Intelligence

With AI, Artificial Intelligence, getting so much publicity, I thought I should have a look at what’s being said about it. I found an interesting article in Forbes about what the author thought were the greatest risks regarding its use.  Here are the fifteen points that the author was making. (You can jump over to the Forbes article to read the full text for each point):

1. Lack of Transparency

2. Bias and Discrimination

3. Privacy Concerns

4. Ethical Dilemmas

5. Security Risks

6. Concentration of Power

7. Dependence on AI

8. Job Displacement

9. Economic Inequality

10. Legal and Regulatory Challenges

11. AI Arms Race

12. Loss of Human Connection

13. Misinformation and Manipulation

14. Unintended Consequences

15. Existential Risks

Good grief! With all that potential for disaster, why would we go near AI? Yet as I thought about those dangers, I realized that those risks would only be there if we were dealing with intelligence, artificial or real. What popped up for me as a huge missing were definitions, definitions of intelligence and artificial for starters. What also popped up for me was the assumption that you and I both know what these words mean and we are in agreement with that. As with most assumptions, we should proceed with extreme caution. So with that in mind, I’ll start back at the beginning, with two definitions.

I found that this was not an easy task. In searching Google for intelligence, I quickly found too many offerings. I had to make a choice and decided on:

The ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.

That definition is simple and easy to work with.

Googling artificial was more straightforward. The differences between definitions were slight and all lead to the following:

Made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally, especially as a copy of something natural.

Using the above definition of intelligence, I think we would agree that each of us is born with that ability. We proved it early in our life by learning to speak. We acquired knowledge, words, and spoke them, demonstrating skill.

Using the definition of artificial, I must conclude that there is no such thing as “artificial intelligence”. I want to offer that what the author says, what most everyone is saying about AI, is wrong. AI isn’t intelligent at all, neither real nor artificial. AI as we are using the term is nothing more than a label for a type of computer app. An example of such an app is ChatGPT mentioned in a previous blog post. The creativity and intelligence that has gone into the design and programming of ChatGPT boggles my mind. However, I jumped over to ChatGPT and typed in, “ChatGPT are you intelligent?” to which I got the following reply:

I don’t possess intelligence in the way humans do. … I do not have consciousness, self-awareness, or true understanding.

Straight from the horse’s mouth. From this premise, that applications such as ChatGPT do not have intelligence, I would conclude that the entire Forbes article is without merit. I think the points the author lists are valid concerns for us all, but none of them are concerns that are threats from some computer program. They are valid concerns because they reveal a horrid short-coming prevalent in all of us.

This short-coming is what I consider is at the heart of what ails human society. We are a species that has received little or no formal education in critical thinking, in learning tools of thought. We’re dependent upon the ChatGPT’s to tell us what’s true rather than our intelligence.

Computer apps whether they are ChatGPT or Dungeons and Dragons types, are inherently risk free. Is that statement true or false? Only human intelligence can give an answer that has any meaning. Only a well-honed skill in critical thinking can have us develop those answers with a certainty that we are correct.

Our biggest risk is and always will be pursuing our choices in life and not fully thinking them through. Worse, passing the buck for this to someone else, and worst, having this choice taken away from us by someone else and we don’t have the real intelligence to know it even happened!

Life is risky. Let’s concede the point and get on with living life fully. To do that we need real intelligence. We need it to find a purpose in life that calls to our innate intelligence, one that demands of us that we expand our powers to think critically and creatively and carve ourselves a life of satisfying brilliance. We are here on Earth to fulfill on the miracle that was our birth, not to cower in the shadows of those who did, frightened of all those scary risks out there.

Want to take on an assignment? Click on the Forbes link above and take on demolishing each of the fifteen points. Test your powers of critical thinking.

You and I have little or no experience in living life from a position of real intelligence. We have no training in it, no formal education. Our human nature, that of a thinking being, leads us to conclude that each of us must first become a philosopher, a master of thought, before we take on the challenge of creating a purpose for our life.

The purposes are all but infinite, but to be experiencing life to the max will take real intelligence, moment by moment, pursuing the next moment of our miraculous lives. The actual purpose doesn’t matter. As risk takers, we may discover that we chose the wrong purpose, that something else is more important. Not a problem. Complete on the old purpose and begin the next. The purpose is dead, long live the purpose.

As I began to explore in my previous post, perhaps the moment of adulthood begins with one mastering the fundamental categories of philosophy. Are you able to name those categories and identify what your sense of life is in each of these categories? What is your metaphysics, your epistemology, your ethics, your aesthetics? How practiced are your powers of reasoning? How grounded are you in reality, in the facts of the universe? Can you answer these questions with a high degree of certainty? Consider the possibility that a rite of passage from childhood to adult would be one in which the new adult demonstrates expertise and confidence in these ideas of thought.

I’m still thinking about what the structure of this rite of passage might look like. I do know that it must be an expression of celebration, of joy, of fun, of significance, of certainty and of a sense of transformation. Then imagine eight billion such adults creating the next technologies, the next symphonies, the next cures. Now that is a world worth building!

And what of my little buddy, ChatGPT? They’ll (see, I got my pronouns woked!) be giving me excellent answers to complex questions that I have, without doing tedious searches through reams of articles and Wikipedia entries. A wonderful app for those of us with real intelligence and time that’s precious.