It never concerned me that there were so many people smarter than I was, because I always knew I had just enough smarts to appreciate and enjoy this crazy world of ours. But when a machine demonstrates that it is smarter than I am, well now, that is disconcerting.
Just the other day, in a first such incidence to be documented, an autonomous AI guided drone killed a human target in Ukraine. Yes, McAvoy, weapons are now capable of making decisions to attack. Excuse me while I place a cold towel on my forehead.
While we humans are standing still in the matter, chatbots are surpassing most of us in our faculty to create flowing text, and as helpful as this might be in the short term, it will prove deleterious in the long run, as we casual humans will take all the shortcuts we can get.
We know that unassisted composition is good for us, and we are finding out that when we write in partnership with chatbots, our brains shift down a few gears. We are fast discovering that regular AI use can be debasing to critical and creative thinking. Our brainwaves actually slow down and flatten out when we lean on AI.
I admire people who walk around on titanium knees, and I applaud people who walk around on titanium hips, but I’ll be darned if I will congratulate anybody who is walking around on a titanium brain.
Personally, I refuse to surrender any of my cognitive abilities to AI. I find it noble to harbor emotions, extend kindness, express love, and be utterly human.
Perhaps a kinder chatbot is on the horizon, to deliver that day when we can all become artists and musicians, but right now it seems to me that AI is capable of tossing the baby out the window with the bathwater. And when that happens, do you suppose a robot is going to be outside that window to catch that baby? No, but a human just might be out there to catch and coddle that baby, while the robot is outback counting beans.
And, I just read that OpenAI recently discovered that a new artificial intelligence model it was testing had gone rogue, and hacked another company.
Recently a robot beat Usain Bolt’s 100m world record of 9.58 seconds. So what? Can that robot now go into the schools and encourage kids to eat nourishing foods, so they can be stronger, jump higher and run faster? No! Well then, will that fast robot be retired to a stud farm? No, most likely that fast robot will be delivering pizzas!
On the flip side, the day that AI can cure cancer, negotiate tariffs, broker ceasefires and expand peace, I will eat my UNR Wolfie Jr. hat on national TV, and will not ask for condiments to sweeten-up the occasion. Hope springs eternal.
Want to hear McAvoy Layne tell it? Go here for an audio version of this column. For more than 35 years, in over 4,000 performances, columnist and Chautauquan McAvoy has been dedicated to preserving the wit and wisdom of “The Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope,” Mark Twain. As Layne puts it: “It’s like being a Monday through Friday preacher, whose sermon, though not reverently pious, is fervently American.”
