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    If AI is the future, why aren’t we (like really) talking about it now?

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    Full disclosure: I have played with computers since the mid-1980s and made my living in the digital space for more than 30 years. I’ve greatly benefitted from the power of technology, and in that time I’ve seen it all.

    Which is why I find the rise of AI and automation so alarming.

    I may be a tech-head, but I can still be an AI sceptic, and I’ve certainly always been suspicious of mega-corporate agendas. AI is the ultimate technology for technology sake – because we can, not always because we should. It’s like those wankers that climb to the top of Mt Everest, to prove something to themselves and impress everyone else, ‘because it’s there’.

    When computers were introduced into the workplace, they were used to help us, often completing tasks that we couldn’t easily do – like perform millions of calculations in seconds, create digital graphics, and save our words in e-documents rather than on type-written pages; helpful, yet always controlled by a human. Anyone who’s ever programmed or written code will understand action-oriented instructions, i.e., when the user does this, you do this, if else, do this – and that’s how computers were designed, to help us with our daily tasks.

    Conversely, AI is being taught (and self-learning) to do things we can already do – write words, compose music, drive cars, and apparently, soon, even make your toastie. When I heard that my first thought was, why the (expletive) do I need AI to make my toastie? I get so much value from the human experience when I wander down the street, chat with anyone I bump into, and watch as a master craftsperson goes about the business of melting cheese for my pleasure.

    And then it struck me – the billionaire set who are driving the purpose and functionality of AI are doing so based on THEIR reality. They do not have a local neighbourhood. They do not participate in their community. They take a friggin’ Lear jet to the office whilst encountering as few (of us) humans as possible. Everything they do is systemised, and fine-tuned for profit, their personal needs all hand-delivered by robots, lackeys and interns working for free, waiting to catch the crumbs of their genius. Of course this all makes sense to them!

    Meanwhile we are powerless, just along for the ride, and having our connections, personalities and purposes taken from us – we’re being robbed blind! 

    Don’t believe me? Have you ever been to the supermarket and seen the self-checkouts? Yes I am that annoying guy who refuses to use them, and when a young person tries to coax me away from the queue being served by the single checkout person who is working, I berate them: “Why do you want me to use the robot, don’t you want to have a job in a couple of years when the store is 99% automated?”

    And if the billionaires aren’t detached enough from the rest of us, they are designing AI to be so intelligent and all-seeing that future versions will actually be designed by AI itself. The next incarnation will be ten times more powerful, and in turn design the one after that which will be 100 times as powerful again, and so on until the most powerful entity in the world is sentient by proxy, yet doesn’t even know what a human is, let alone what we might think, feel, want or need. 

    Douglas Adams would roll in his grave. 

    Derek Green
    Derek Greenhttps://theescapegoat.com
    I'd rather die wandering than die wondering. Read more of my travel escapades at: theescapegoat.com

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