ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: FRIEND OR FOE?

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: FRIEND OR FOE?
Will Artificial Intelligence benefit or curse civilization?

● Artificial Intelligence [A.I.] is far more than a bunch of algorithms in software programs. It’s something different, something menacing, and something totally foreign to the history of mankind. Even those engineering and improving A.I. realize they really don’t know what they’re doing.

● Leland Smythe is an authority on A.I. and leading systems developer for a major software firm. He says, “We know that it [A.I.] is getting away from us. We understand there will be reaction to our action, but are often surprised by the results. It’s beginning to run away from us faster than we can run after it. Even more frightening is that A.I. is quickly becoming self aware.”

● Already the lines between reality and fantasy are being erased as A.I. occupies more of the spectrum of ‘perceived reality.’ Photographs, videos, fingerprints, and images of all kinds are no longer trustworthy. The widespread use of A.I. is slowly but surely erasing reality as we knew it.

● The courts are being bombarded with false images and are hard pressed to decide what images are and are not admissible as evidence. The same goes for far less evidence-required in civil courts. About the only dependable [traditionally the least dependable] evidence in any trial is that of eye witnesses. Interesting is that because of A.I. we are now relying more and more on the unreliable testimony of eye witnesses. This is because we can no longer believe pictures, video or audio let along accept these as evidence.

● Read your newspapers and you’ll be bombarded with news articles written by, you guessed it, A.I. At present it’s easy to pick out the A.I. written articles because their headlines are often confusing and poorly constructed. They still ignore common rules of grammar. The content of these articles is getting better but is still laced with contradiction, inaccuracy, and even down-right lies.

● I’ll log onto the New York Post for example, and it takes no time at all to tell if an article was written with A.I. and not by a trained journalist. Are there any ‘trained journalists’ still employed by news outlets? And it doesn’t stop here since TV talking heads are often reading from a script written by A.I. or at least with its ‘help.’

● A growing number of college kids are having their papers and even theses written by A.I. and, with just a little ‘skimming and correction’ they are able to pass these works off as their own. Never mind the accuracy of such papers, a professor has little time to pour over every one to see if it’s right or wrong. A.I. makes it so difficult to weed out its influence that a professor must spend 3 or 4 times more time weeding out the crap!

● Get ready for this: A.I. driving your car. So far the future of ‘self-driving’ cars is in question, and for good reason.

● It seems A.I. still manages to run over people, plow cars into phone poles, and even set cars on fire because they can send the wrong signal to the wrong component. This is especially true in Electric Vehicles.

● New military aircraft, from drones to fighters and bombers, are being controlled more and more by A.I. We’ve already lost one U.S. Navy F35 Lightning when an A.I. driven computer shut down all systems for reasons still unknown. The pilot did manage to eject since the ejection system was independent of the computer.

● A.I. is fast becoming self-aware. Dr. Reynaldo Hernandez, an authority on application of Artificial Intelligence, says it poses a threat to everyone. He says, “Think for a moment and see what happens when A.I. becomes self-aware, realizing that it really only needs us [humans] in limited areas of endeavor. What’ll we do when it disobeys us because it has found ‘a more efficient or expedient’ solution?”

● From cars and trucks to term papers and theses we’re in trouble. All fields of scientific research could well turn on us as soon as A.I. realizes that people, humans, are getting in the way.