Like it or not, artificial intelligence is rapidly weaving itself into the fabric of our everyday lives. Artificial intelligence, or AI, is an invisible hand that moves levers and flips switches without our conscious knowledge that it is at work. And this fact scares hell out of a lot of folks.
Innovations have always scared hell out of a lot of folks. Every human advancement has been met with skepticism and fear when first introduced. That’s just how our minds work. This is likely a holdover reflex from the time when we were a prey species and everything really was trying to kill us.
From fire, stone tools and the wheel, through steam engines, automobiles and computers, there has always been an appreciable segment of our population that has freaked out and said, “We’re all gonna die!”
Yet, here we still are. And each innovation has advanced human civilization to the point that we now take them for granted.
Today, AI is taking its rightful place in the pantheon of advancements that scare hell out of us. Even though we all unconsciously use AI every day, and some are thriving with this new intelligence, others firmly believe that it portends the end of the human race.
We fear AI, like we feared horseless carriages, because we don’t understand it. We fear it because it’s new, and we’re more comfortable with old stuff. We fear AI because we think it will replace us rather than usher us into the future.
We are afraid of AI because we think it is some alien force that has invaded our world, when AI is really just the product of the human mind exponentially multiplied. We’re nervous that it might change our world, and change is always scary for humans.
The reality is that AI is already helping us behind the scenes in many walks of life. Doctors use the power of AI in diagnosing and treating what ails us. Lawyers use AI to do legal research that keeps us out of the hoosegow. Every time you Google a question, you get an answer influenced by AI. And the list goes on.
AI is apolitical and nonpartisan; it would never be a slave to Democrat or Republican dogma.
rod miller
Artificial Intelligence can read, understand, analyze and remember everything written in any language on Earth, expressed in both words and numbers, and do so in less time than it takes you to read this column. AI is a tool like any other, and we can learn to use it to our advantage.
Now, I’ll use the rest of my space here to suggest a role for AI in our lives that should dramatically ratchet up the pucker factor among readers. Politics and governance in human societies might be the highest and best use for AI.
Hear me out.
Read any survey or poll about trustworthiness among professions in America, and you’ll find that politicians are ranked well below pimps and horse thieves. Used car salesmen score higher than politicians. With that in mind, why do we trust politicians with the solemn chore of governing us?
An open-source, transparent and fully auditable AI model would do a better job at this. It would never lie to us or steal from us. AI can dispassionately carry out our instructions.
For instance, we could instruct it to “form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,” and AI would do it in a heartbeat with no backsass. God knows the politicians we’ve elected to do precisely that have done a piss poor job of it!
AI is pure logic and wouldn’t exhibit the human emotional frailties of anger, greed, vanity, hate or the other impediments to good government that we now tolerate from politicians. AI would never suffer cognitive decline. Since it lacks gonads, AI would never screw an intern or rack up frequent flier miles on the Lolita Express. It would never prostitute itself for money or headlines.
AI is apolitical and nonpartisan; it would never be a slave to Democrat or Republican dogma.
How many politicians can you say that about?
Throughout our shared history, we humans have always had options when faced with an innovation, and our common story is about how we have made choices at those times. We embraced fire because we chose not to keep eating raw meat. We chose the wheel because we got tired of carrying heavy stuff on our backs.
We can choose to keep electing flawed politicians with their appalling track record, or we can choose an alternate option that scares hell out of us but might do a much better job.
This will be interesting.
Columnist Rod Miller is a Wyoming native, raised on his family's cattle ranch in Carbon County. He graduated from Rawlins High School, home of the mighty Outlaws, where he was named Outstanding Wrestler... More by Rod Miller