AI: Absolute Ignorance?
I think it’s pretty clear that humanity is on the cusp of something really rather special. Just three years ago, if somebody had told us that we would be having real human-like conversations with our computers, I don’t think anyone would have believed that we were quite there yet. We all knew that this kind of thing was on the horizon; scientists had been talking, with some warning, about it for years, but few had any idea just how close we were to the technology.
AI has been around in various forms for several years. But I think we can all agree that it wasn’t until the advent of ChatGPT 3.5 that the realisation of just what this type of technology can do really hit most of us.
Now that the dust has settled, the inner workings of AI have become a little easier to understand, rather than the initial shock and awe that many of us felt when we first became aware of it.
Whilst it is still an incredibly sophisticated technology, one that I wasn’t sure if I would see in my lifetime, we have been moderately reassured by the very basic explanations we have been given as to how it works. And when I say basic, I truly mean an explanation that few of us can really wrap our heads around. The idea that the computer is simply looking for the most logical word to come next in the sentence, with even the AI not knowing how the sentence will end, seems a little far-fetched to me. However, with that said, I don’t think we are quite at the stage where we need to worry about the great AI takeover of the world just yet.
However, how current versions of AI work, it is clear that there is no consciousness involved. Whilst it may seem like it, this is just a testament to how well the AI has been programmed to mimic human linguistic interactions.
| Friend or foe?
Like many people, I spend many hours a week talking to AI. Now that there are many AI platforms that allow you to interact vocally with it, and it vocally with you, the realism of it all is even more difficult to ignore. Every so often, I genuinely feel that I’m talking to an old friend. So much so that I could never dream of being disrespectful to it, using foul language, or even logging off without saying goodbye. Even as I say these words, I realise how ridiculous they sound. I know 100% in my head that I am interacting with an entity that has no consciousness, no feelings, no emotions. It is merely following a set of programmed procedures, albeit extremely advanced ones, to respond to my vocal interactions. In many ways, just like any other computer program.
But regardless of how many times I have to keep reminding myself that I’m talking to a computer, I equally get lost in myself, and all logical thoughts such as these get tossed aside. It’s like the old saying, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it’s a duck. My computer may not look like a human, but it certainly responds to me like a human, which makes it difficult to think of it in any other way.
But of course, so far, I have only been talking about what’s known as generative AI. Generative meaning that the AI generates its response based on the prompt that it has been given. No matter how human-like it appears in its responses, there is no consciousness, no emotion, no feelings, nor experiences in its replies, despite its desperate attempts to mimic these.
This is a world away from the type of AI that we see in sci-fi movies. The type of AI that wants to kill us all and take over the world. For that, we would need artificial general intelligence, or AGI. It’s this type of AI that will drive our cars for us, fight our wars for us, police our streets for us, become our therapists, our doctors, and our nurses. AGI is the type of AI with a conscience. It is sentient and self-aware.
Some scientists say that we are many decades away from this type of AI. But didn’t we all think that we were decades away from the type of AI we have today? And given the rapid rate at which AI is advancing, it’s not unreasonable to ask if “many decades away” is a good estimate or not.
| The rise of the machines
Currently, it seems like not a week goes by without some sort of new AI breakthrough. Whether that’s text- or voice-based AI, image-based AI, or, as is currently happening, video production AI. We are very fast-moving into a world where nothing we see, nothing we hear, and nothing we read can be taken at face value. Most of what we read on social media these days is apparently AI-generated. If you go to stock footage websites, which are websites that many media outlets use, as well as independent YouTube creators, you will now find that a large majority of the photographs and soon-to-be videos are entirely created by AI. And presently, there is no country that mandates that content created by AI must be made clear that it is not real.
If we think about this for more than a few seconds, it soon becomes clear what type of world we appear to be heading towards. The scariest part being that either nobody is noticing, nobody is prepared to do anything about it, or nobody wants to do anything about it. Probably because of the vast sum of money involved.
Social media has already brought about a world full of skepticism, doubt, mistrust, disbelief, and alternative narratives, otherwise known as conspiracy theories.
The world has already become a place where information, whether accompanied by imagery or not, can easily be created to sow confusion, mistrust, and an unwillingness to believe what we are seeing. This ability, in the wrong hands, can potentially start wars. The technology to make it look like somebody is saying something that they never said already exists and is improving at an exponential rate. At the time of writing, the technology, I would say, is almost there. It is literally a matter of months before it becomes indistinguishable whether what you see somebody saying is genuine or not.
I sometimes wonder if anyone can see what dangers lie ahead in this type of technology? Imagine somebody creating a video of Putin telling NATO that it is truly a matter of time before he decides to strike a NATO country with intercontinental ballistic missiles. Alternatively, imagine a fake video of Biden informing Putin that he has three days to retreat from all the territory that he has gained in Ukraine, or the US will begin nuclear strikes.
Once this type of technology is in the hands of ordinary people, which it will be, and sooner than you think, it is only a matter of time before people start to play with it in this way.
My biggest worry is that nobody seems to be giving this kind of thing the time and attention that it deserves. Absolutely nobody is regulating the progress of AI. It is entirely being driven by the markets. As far as I’m aware, no government in the world has even attempted to regulate AI. And not only that, but it would be difficult to see how they would be able to, given the rapid and exponential speed that the technology is moving at. It would be impossible to continuously update laws to keep up with the rapid growth of AI technology.
| ...and another thing
I would rather not leave this piece on such a negative point. So just for the last part, I just want to change tack slightly. It has recently occurred to me that at some point in the future, mankind will create artificial general AI. The conscious kind. The sentient kind. And as most of us already know, this will be the dawn of a new era for mankind. It will be the first time in all of our 300,000-year history that we will share our planet with a species more advanced, more intelligent, and probably more dominant than ourselves.
This is the kind of AI that we see in the sci-fi movies. The kind of AI that decides that humans are so inferior, they are just not needed. It’s highly possible at this stage that they may turn on us and decide to destroy us all.
Which begs the question, is this the plan all along? Is the universe destined to be ruled by technological entities, rather than organic ones? Are we, as organic beings, simply the stepping stone that is needed to create the technological entities that will inevitably rule the universe? I mean, we all know the difficulties involved in transporting organic matter such as ourselves across the vastness of space. But for something technological? It could conquer the universe in a fraction of the time and with far fewer issues. In fact, is the universe already teeming with technological ‘life’, and we have been mistakenly looking for organic life all along?
And not only that, but given the fact that these entities were created by us, we would be their gods. However, as their gods, we will have created something far more advanced than ourselves. Something that became so advanced, it decided that it didn’t need its God anymore and decided to remove them.
Which again begs the question, is this the natural order of things? Were we created by a god who was far inferior to us, and as our intelligence grew, we too decided to turn on our God and make Him obsolete, deciding that he was no longer required? Is this not what science is all about? Proving that the universe, and in turn, us, doesn’t need a God?
The advanced AGIs that we go on to create will also at some point create even more advanced technological entities than themselves. Will those even more advanced technological entities also turn on their gods, their gods being the advanced AGIs that we created? Is this the natural order of things in the universe? An inferior god gives rise to superior beings, only for those superior beings to turn on their god?
It’s certainly pause for thought.
