A.I. & “Information Society”: Child’s Play or “Artificiall Man”?
A.I. and Security? Palantir, hear you’re a top favorite for a cool contract worth half billion pounds! Best you hurry to deliver before the NHS gets the “seven-year itch.” Boy, do I have a counterterrorist strategy for you to sell as “AI” spyware. Not so fast. Show me your ‘crystal ball’ and I’ll show you mine!
Israel is and will be at the forefront of A.I. My respect to Prof. Isaac Ben-Israel and his work in the cyber spectrum. Yet, let’s be clear. Israel’s future to “weep for generations” will likely be on account of ill-advised commands, steering it to face reprisal at the hand of Palestinians and their Alliances, not AI.
For China, Europe, and U.S., A.I. comes down to PROFITS, POWER & SECURITY – Consumerism, Control & Competitiveness. New tool for surveillance boys to play with!
Now, let’s talk information and Google.
Four years ago, in my August 2019 paper, Knock, Knock. Who’s there? The Alphabet, I shared my experience with a middle school librarian:
“Hello, may I have a list of the books I have checked out over the years?” Of course, I didn’t really need to know and was only testing to see if she was open to the idea. At first, she seemed surprised telling me such a request was odd. I pleaded with her saying it was to demonstrate to my teacher how much extracurricular reading I was doing and obtain a better grade.
I was persistent and continued to plead. She smiled and said she’d have to charge me an administrative fee and that it may take some time (my first experience with bureaucratic red tape). Several weeks later I picked up my list and made another request.
“Hello, what is the fee for the list of books checked out by the people on this list? She of course declined my request, muttering some issues with privacy asking, “Why would you need that info?” I replied, “It’s how I think. I could read all the books in this library and gain knowledge. But, what good is having knowledge if you don’t have information and use it. I could find a way to use what the people on this list read or better still sell it as you did.”
The Librarian didn’t appear pleased giving me the “evil eye.” Was she being evil or simply profiting from a “free” government service? Seems only fitting that at the library I’ve learned information can be bought and sold. No one really owns or controls it.
Imagine the power of digitizing a library where citizens freely offer their data as they’re searching for information. Free of charge? Well, not exactly. If you want the goods on people you need to pay up. Imagine no more. Just “Google it.”
🙂
As children, to play with some of our toys we needed to pull a string to hear, “I love you.” Action figures and Transformers came later, but they didn’t quite interact as that lovable doll or ‘Teddy Bear’ and awake our imagination.
Now as Adults, appears many of us are NOT “Masters of Our Imagined Domain.” Some still cry and need someone to chat with and tell them, “I love you.”
Oh sure, AI is said to be the ‘new’ thing full of possibilities for consumers. But in the end, doesn’t it simply come down to those looking for just another form of entertainment, or searching for a ‘ghost writer,’ an adviser or just some(body) to chat with?
Liken to the social element where users play online games like children with toys, the human element in its struggle to feel alive, paradoxically pays with their lives to not exist as a copy of an “Artificiall Man.” Bet ya know someone who lost their fight and exists no more, save but for their ‘selfie’ – a digitized image floating in the ‘cloud.’
Click after click and text after text, as the letters in the Alphabet, you are being connected to the INFORMATION SOCIETY.
From Cloud to TEXT to ChatGPT?
“We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.” – Peter Thiel, Founders Fund
No, no ‘flying cars,” but hey you got a Tesla electric car, kinda like your toy car, only a lot bigger and more expensive!
In my 2009 paper, “Is the Future in the Clouds? Technology & Cloud Computing” I point out that by the time Gates saw the implications and importance of this “Inter Net” world, Larry and Sergey hit rock star stardom.
But Bill was “unable to do with the search engine what he had done with the browser.” Eight years after the founding of Microsoft, in 1983, a movement advocating ‘free software’ started.
Ultimately “the term free software was replaced with open source — because many company executives could not believe in a product that did not participate economically in a free-market or mixed-market economy.” Basically, why would you offer a service for free when you can charge for it?
Naturally, 40 years later, we’ve gone from “Free” and Open Source to OpenAI and ChatGPT. And similar to Microsoft’s Windows, the “end-user is not actually purchasing software, but purchasing the right to use the software…the source code to closed-source software is considered a trade secret by its manufacturers.”
But will ChatGPT do for Microsoft what Atari BASIC did for Microsoft BASIC II?
In cloud computing, “users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the “cloud” that supports them. But will users, like queens who look upon mirrors, turn to chatting with whom they see as “the Listener” and rely on their every word?
Appears so. Thrill of seeing our future in a ‘crystal ball,’ tea leaves and cards continues. And in these “modern times,” some still look to the advice of psychics and horoscopes. But is it really the thrill of prediction or fear of decision?
According to the late Peter L. Bernstein, “Nothing is more soothing or more persuasive than the computer screen [but] those who live only by the numbers may find that the computer has simply replaced the oracles to whom people resorted in ancient times for guidance in risk management and decision-making.”
It’s been argued that life’s a gamble. Bernstein says, “human beings have always been infatuated with gambling because it puts us head-to-head against the fates…”
But not all can differentiate between the thrill of facing an adversary or challenge with the risk of losing it all for the desperate sake of profit.
Or, hopeful fools as those ‘wishing on a star.” Idea of miracles prevails. Yet, on A.I. human reasoning, a man of science notes, “When people use GPT-4, they are “amazed at its ability to generate text.” Amazed, really doc? Sounds miraculous. After four centuries, Thomas Hobbes’ response is apt:
“That Which Seemeth A Miracle To One Man, May Seem Otherwise To Another. Furthermore, seeing Admiration and Wonder, is consequent to the knowledge and experience…, And thence it is, that ignorant, and superstitious men make great Wonders of those works, which other men, knowing to proceed from Nature, (which is not the immediate, but the ordinary work of God,) admire not at all.”
ChatGPT has been compared to the printing press, naturally. We know He who manipulated and monopolized it had the power. Still, I find it more like counterfeit as in Monopoly’s play money. Right, Bill? 😉
Deceptive Disruptive Power
“It is easy to boast of victory over ancient oppression, but what if victory has been gained at the price of an even greater subjection to the forces of the artificial necessity of the technical society which has come to dominate our lives?” – Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, 1964
Sure, tech executives gaily rage of benefits of disruption. But they leave out their deceptive maneuvers, be it their shyster tactics of campaign contributions to avoid regulation and withholding negatives accrued effects on society.
Disruptive technologies concern not its applications to the fitness of the human system. A far cry from the disruption the industrial age brought as I point out in the “Gilded Age to Google Age: Telegraph to “Gmail Tap”?
TODAY, Pure Human higher intelligence is no longer the focus. Suddenly, it’s become unnecessary and insufficient. Social media lowered the ‘playing field.’ Now ALL younger generations are susceptible to addiction, depression, and anxiety.
AI is said to promise a lot of “POTENTIAL”. Let’s look at two: Education & Health. But it’s not the first. INTERNET disruption in higher education came with promises and fears of transforming the classroom from on site to ON LINE. So WTF happened? University Lobbyists.
Once again the lure of a technology to cure diseases overshadows the hard facts. Treatments exist. But few have access to them. So by the same chatty A.I. token, what good are POTENTIAL A.I. cures if few will afford them? Sure, it’s not moral or ethical. It’s just easier and legal to deny treatment than a cure. And more profitable.
Listen, for the past two decades, the left elitist have been promising and pushing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) on a caste society where few kids excel in it. Irony is they too pump billions of tax dollars unto their failed STEM Cell research.
“Survival of the Fittest” when coined by Herbert Spencer was seen in evolutionary terms not physical. Yet, in this new technical revolution the natural order of things has upended survivors arising from ‘natural selection” resulting in ‘survival of the foolish.” To be clear, dimwitted need not be brainless.
Kids “Hooked on Monkey Fonics?”
“We don’t need no education, We don’t need no thought control… All in all, it’s just another brick in the wall” – Pink Floyd
Former U.S. President noted the benefit of A.I. for girls unable to go to school. Hmm, was he referring to those in 3rd world countries or 3rd class citizens in the U.S. unable to finish school?
Sounds more like ‘monkey see, monkey do. Image of South Park “Hooked on Monkey Fonics” comes to mind.
Alas, high intelligence and healthy physical attributes, attractive though they are, are no longer the expectation for most in this ‘next generation.’ It’s as if society as a whole has decided to not aim at such pursuits.
Parents, don’t fool yourself. In the end, your child will likely be just ‘Another Brick in the Wall” of websites lost in the ‘cloud.’
Thinking Outside the Artificial Chatbox?
“Nature (the art whereby God hath made and governes the world) is by the art of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated, that it can make an Artificial Animal. – Thomas Hobbes, LEVIATHAN, 1651
Machines have long augmented or replaced human jobs – sewing machine, washing machine, vending machines, automated teller machine (ATM). AI, like ‘a rose by any other name,’ is simply automation of information through digitization via the ‘cloud’.
Tech executives and proponents (paid members) of AIs acceleration offer NO solutions but scare tactics. Geoffrey Hinton leaving Google? Hinton, here’s a Hint: Like a good accountant leaving a business after he’s ‘worked the numbers,’ take your money and run.
But take notice, as those who strive for “perfection” have discovered, confirming the purity of the silicone is critical. If a diamond can be synthesized, ultimately devaluing ‘pure’ gems in their entirety, how long before all man mined minerals and man-made materials hold no value and face the same imminent fate?
Knock, Knock
The Alphabet: Knock, Knock
Lety: Who’s there?
The Alphabet
Lety: Hello Alphabet! What’s the fee for data on the “smart” people on my list who bought your smart technology?
The Alphabet: Why not buy the goods from a public servant?
Lety: Well Alphabet, as a CIA Officer noted, “We also might purchase things from the private sector.” You see, we in the intelligence business both invest and employ tech. It pays to “know our ABCs” and CIAs. 😉
INFORMATION SOCIETY: Agree to “terms and conditions,” click “Agree” 😉
~~~~~~~~
Another Brick in the Wall
Song by Pink Floyd
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Roger Waters