In Deuteronomy 11:26, God says to the Israelites: “Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse.” Today’s blessing and curse happens to be AI.
There’s a huge amount of speculation about AI’s impact right now. After years of programming, one thing I can tell you is it’s very difficult to predict the impact software will have on people. When the internet first started, most people just thought it would be a different way of reading your local paper. Remember local papers?
AI will undoubtedly have a huge impact, like the internet did. And it will change us, as all technology does. But chances are it won’t be in the way it’s currently predicted.
So if we can’t predict how AI will change things, how can we prepare for it?
One, we can focus on the part guaranteed to happen: change. Change is hard and we don’t like it, but it is coming. Get ready to let go. AI will be used in cyber attacks, but it will also be used to defend against them. It will destroy some cultural institutions, like the internet did; but it will create its own, like the internet did. We’ll have to learn new skills.
Two, we can focus on the part which doesn’t change: human nature. The internet did not make people gossipy, materialistic, or idle consumers of empty entertainment. We easily notice how any technology concentrates negative aspects of human nature — it’s much harder to see positive ones, but they’re there.
Here’s the AI question I don’t hear anyone asking: what’s the point of being human?
First computers did arithmetic, and we dismissed it, because the machine didn’t “understand” the motions it was going through. Then computers beat us at chess, but we dismissed that too. A machine could never be creative! Now we have machines painting pictures based on the punchline of a joke they invented.
Regardless of whether you accept the machine is “thinking”, it’s pretty inescapable at this point that a machine will be able to do anything a person can, better, soon.
In order to survive, I doubt we’re going to have to battle superintelligent robots. I think we’re going to have to battle with our own shadows.
I think we’re going to have to create meaning.
