Many of us who are struggling to get our computers updated from Windows 98 have been especially interested, lately, in AI. Artificial Intelligence.
Because normal, genuine intelligence seems to be failing us… as anyone can tell, if they’re following the news lately.
In a sense, those of us interested in AI are rubbing shoulders with the computer nerds at Facebook and Google, who are also interested. (But perhaps for different reasons?)
But is AI all it’s cracked up to be? Or are we getting fooled again, into thinking something really cool is on the horizon, only to be utterly disappointed? Like New Coke… Harley Davidson perfume… Google+… The Jerry Springer Show.
One of the problems with artificial intelligence is the very word ‘artificial’. When I was a kid, there was a man down the street who had an artificial leg. Sometimes, when he wanted to scare us kids, he would casually pull up his pant leg and give us a glimpse of the pink plastic limb. We would run away.
I quickly developed the opinion that ‘artificial’ was not a really cool thing.
I had another meaningful experience with the word ‘artificial’ when I was young. My mom and I used to visit the cemetery once or twice a year, to put fresh flowers on my grandpa’s grave. Nearby, there were some graves where the people had left artificial flowers on the graves. My mom made it very clear to me that we would never think of putting artificial flowers on Grandpa’s grave, although she never told me why. I assumed that Grandpa was watching us from his window up in heaven, and had an aversion to plastic flowers. It seemed to me that the plastic flowers lasted a lot longer than the fresh flowers, but I was also given to understand that dead people deserve better, and that the people leaving plastic flowers didn’t truly care about their grandpa.
These are only a couple of instances of personal experiences that helped me formulate my feelings about the word ‘artificial’, and how anything artificial was inevitably inferior to the real thing. I was also taught to despise artificial Christmas trees, artificial grass, artificial sweeteners, and artificial insemination. (I learned about that last one later, after I’d had the ‘birds and bees’ conversation with my dad.)
All of this explanation is just to make it clear that, growing up as a kid, I was basically taught that ‘artificial’ was a synonym to ‘second-rate’. (Especially artificial insemination.)
So when Google and Facebook and Amazon started bragging about their new developments in ‘artificial intelligence’, my natural skepticism kicked right in. These companies are not actually talking about ‘intelligence’ at all. They’re talking about something that looks vaguely like intelligence, but is essentially fake.
I wondered, though, if ‘artificial intelligence’ might have certain unseen advantages over natural intelligence. Did it last longer, like the artificial flowers in the cemetery? Did it allow you move from one place to another, like an artificial leg?
What, exactly, does artificial intelligence do… other than generate articles in Forbes Magazine?
To better understand what was going on, I visited a big tech company’s AI website, and there I found a couple of important photos. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, so these two photo are worth more than my entire essay today.
The first photo shows a couple of people trying to upgrade their computer from Windows 98. My heart goes out to them.
The second photo shows an intelligent-looking man writing on a whiteboard.
The message plastered across the website home page is, “Advancing AI for everyone.” So apparently, this man is engaged in advancing AI for everyone. It appears that he has written the letter ‘P’ and drawn a circle around it, and then added two arrows — one heading roughly NW and the other pointing roughly SSW.
I believe even an average person like myself could have drawn this shape. In fact, I have several doodles sitting on my desk right now, on little scraps of paper, that I think are much more interesting. If that’s all it takes to advance AI, then I am definitely not impressed.
The part of artificial intelligence that frightens me, however, is watching it seep into our schools and classrooms, like an overflowing sewer system. If there were ever a place where honest-to-goodness intelligence — not artificial intelligence — were necessary to the future of the human species, it’s surely in our schools.
But from what I can see happening, the education industry is falling all over itself to embrace artificial intelligence, mostly as a way to reduce salary expenses.
For some reason, when I think about AI in schools, I keep picturing a graveyard full of plastic flowers.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.