On an almost daily basis, maybe even multiple times per day basis, I am confronted by some news story announcing the end of the world via AI. Look at the accompanying headline, ostensibly by a great mind in Info Tech, if you think I am exaggerating.
The whole issue is artificial but not intelligent, which is also true of AI itself. There is nothing “intelligent” about AI.
Before I say anything else, I should establish some bona fides, after all, why should any of my readers imagine that I know enough about the topic to comment? So here that goes. Oracle’s first commercial database product was its version 3.0, which, to the best of my knowledge, was never used to create a commercial database or product. I began using Oracle with its version 4, and while most of my friends know me as a scholar of biblical Hebrew, I actually earned my living as a database engineer. By the time of my retirement from the University of Michigan, I had created databases and managed entire departments at UM’s College of Engineering. While I was no “coding genius,” I knew the trade reasonably well, and had enough knowledge of the industry to be an effective manager.
The use of the term “Artificial Intelligence” or “AI” is sheer marketing genius. It seeks to present what is actually a normal and ordinary expansion of existing products as something new and revolutionary. But it is neither. It’s just more of the same. And when I say that, I mean the “same” as hysterical reactions to every other minor milestone in Info Tech history.
Today’s audience has largely forgotten that once upon a time someone invented a device called the “slide rule.” This was a physical tool with engraved numbers and a slide that allowed it to be used to make all sorts of calculations more readily than with pencil and paper. The pundits of the time announced Armageddon and the downfall of pencils. A few years later, portable calculators arrived and, Oh My God, children will never learn how to do simple arithmetic.
The world inched further towards global destruction with the arrival of personal computers. And don’t get me started on Word Processors and <gasp> spell checkers. No one will ever be able to spell again! Actually, in the case of the stupidity of the English language, that wouldn’t be such a bad outcome!
I hope you get the idea. All of these various technological advances were accompanied by announcements of the number of jobs they were going to destroy. And the truth was (and is), if a job can be eliminated this way, there wasn’t much reason for that job to exist.
The good news is that even though AI is currently being hyped at a ridiculous level, it is a worthwhile development in the IT sphere and has the potential for doing much good in our lives and the world. It may very well replace the need for humans in some jobs, but in hindsight, I’m pretty sure we’ll wind up agreeing that those humans have found much better things to do with their lives.
While we’re all waiting for AI to rise to the promise, we’ll also be seeing it misused and we’ll have to work towards mitigating those aspects. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty tired of arguing with an AI bot about whether I need to speak to a human customer service representative. And using AI for deceptive purposes in reels and other digital media has already reached absurd levels. Hopefully, as we learn to dismiss those reels and such without giving them credence or even looking at them, the volume will decrease.
But while that is going on, AI can take my older, faded and decrepit photos and help me restore them so that I can remember how wonderful my loved ones were decades ago. So, the answer is to use AI for what it is good for and learn to avoid it when it is used for ill purposes.
Climbing down from my soapbox now!
