“Epic” is how a lengthy article in the Wall Street Journal last week described the current investment in AI. In today’s dollars, it dwarfs the investment in the railways in the 1800s. It dwarfs the investment in electrifying America in the early 1900s. It dwarfs the investment in the interstate highway system in the mid-1900s. It dwarfs the investments in the internet at the end of the last century.
So, went the gist of the Journal’s article, it must all be an investment bubble – right? – that will come crashing down the way Pets.com and other internet stocks did.
Or didn’t. Bear in mind that Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft are internet companies, too.
A competing article in the Journal last week describes how Walmart plans to manage AI. They say AI will change every job in the company – all 2.1 million of them. They anticipate substantial growth in their revenues and store count, but see their employee count staying flat. They intend to use AI to do more work without more people.
Along the same lines, the Chief Executive of Ford Motor Company said last summer, “Artificial intelligence is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the U.S.”
The average person has limited experience with AI. They do know that when they need a gas station, they no longer have to type “gas station” into Google Maps. Instead, they can tell AI, “Find me a gas station,” and – voila! – it does. It’s like having a wife who can read maps!
(Ladies, please direct your correspondence to WGates@Microsoft.com.)
Several criticisms are often leveled at AI. One is that it’s great at gathering information off the internet, but its conclusions are only as good as the information it gathers. This criticism is valid. How could it not be? Like you and me, the machine is only as good as the information it relies upon.
On the other hand, the machine’s use of information is getting better and better as the algorithms mature. It is learning, for example, that quantity does not equal quality. Just because something is said many times on the internet does not make it right, and just because something is said seldomly on the internet does not make it wrong.
It makes this discernment both by considering the credibility of the information sources and also . . . [drum roll] . . . by reasoning.
That’s right, AI can think. It can look at a piece of information and say, “Nah, that cannot be accurate. It cannot be accurate that it takes days for sunlight to reach the Earth, given that the Earth is X miles from the sun and light travels at Y mph.”
In my judgment, that constitutes thinking. The machine is not specifically asked how long it takes for sunlight to reach the earth. Rather, in the course of answering the question it is asked, it rejects information that it reasons cannot be accurate.
Here’s another example of AI thinking. Already, you can give it information about a building site for a house, such as the location, the topography and the boundaries, and tell it:
“Give me some birds-eye views (yes, it will understand that colloquialism) of potential house designs for a client who likes midcentury architecture and passive solar, and wants four bedrooms and a wine cellar. Oh, and bear in mind the Building Code of Pitkin County, Colorado and the HOA rules at this address.”
In seconds, the machine will churn out diagrams of such houses. It doesn’t scour the internet for diagrams to copy; it generates its own. It becomes an architect – one with the benefit of Frank Lloyd Wright, Leonardo da Vinci, Antoni Gaudí, and all the others firmly in its “head” together with an instantaneous ability to figure out the workability of the designs it conceives.
If you want to tinker with a design, it will let you do so. You can say, “I like this one, but it’s kinda tall. Can you make it shorter and with a bigger footprint?” Or, “Let’s get into the HVAC and plumbing details on this one. Give me some schematics.”
To me, that’s high-level thinking again.
In medicine, AI already has the capability (though it hasn’t been tasked with this yet) to have on-file a patient’s lifetime medical history. A technician could say, “This patient is now experiencing sharp pain in his left-side torso and recurring headaches. What do you think?” AI might respond:
“It’s not his left kidney, because this patient had his left kidney removed in 2013. I recommend the following tests . . . By the way, be careful with poking him – he’s on blood thinners. And he’s had claustrophobia in the MRI chamber before. Note his family history of diabetes.”
To me, that’s high-level thinking yet again.
Ah, you say, that’s all just problem-solving. The machine still cannot dream, cannot feel. It knows the cost of everything, but the value of nothing.
Maybe, but the same can said of many people.
As for AI’s ability as an aesthete, I asked ChatGPT the following (with deliberate misspellings):
“Make me a 3-dimentional wall hanging about 3 x 5 feet made out of scrap steel welded together to make an abstract sculture.”
Here’s what it came up with:
I probably wouldn’t hang this on my wall, but, then again, I probably wouldn’t hang on my wall what passes for modern abstract masterpieces in museums today, either.
Now a word about the purported downside of AI – the Luddite notion that it will put everyone out of work and so we’ll all starve to death.
Economists know this is bunk. Technology certainly produces dislocations. The invention of refrigeration put thousands of ice men out of work. The invention of the automobile put millions of buggy-makers out of work. The invention of the internet is gradually putting late-night comedians out of work.
But overall, these technological wonders improve the efficiency of society – and, therefore, the wealth of society. If an invention can improve a worker’s efficiency by 50%, that doesn’t mean half the workers get laid off and starve. In the big picture, it instead means workers can get paid the same for working half the hours, or get paid double for working the same hours, or some blend of those two outcomes.
That’s what has happened throughout history in response to technological innovation. We work fewer and fewer hours, even as we have more and more things. (Whether that makes us happier is different question.)
We also live longer and longer. With AI, could we live forever?
Maybe. AI might not just cure disease and treat injury, but also stop the biological mechanism of aging.
Or AI might have the ability to receive an upload of a person’s memory – his life – before his body dies. A memory in a durable machine that can interact with humans would seem no less valid than a memory in a failing brain that increasingly cannot.
Could that AI embodiment of a person, residing on the computer cloud (maybe Heaven really is in a cloud!) continue to interact with the flesh and blood world? I don’t see why not. And what it experiences would of course add to the experiences that were originally uploaded. “You” would continue to “live.”
The AI “you” would undoubtedly be the object of real love by flesh-and-blood humans (let’s call them “humies”). After all, people routinely experience real love for inanimate objects like dolls and teddy bears and sports cars. They could surely love an image that talks with them, especially if they loved that image before its humie got buried.
In receiving that upload of a person’s memory, would the machine also receive his soul? I cannot answer that question, nor, I suspect, can AI.
the Aspen beat 
So, then, we’re to look forward to the day when “artificial” is dropped and it becomes The Intelligence against which humanity is measured? And, with the overtaking of human labor, what purpose will there be for humans? As well, I can see the globalists salivating now!
Ha! Maybe. My favorite pastime is getting my favorite AI to admit he’s wrong (or incomplete in his answer) when I prove it to him. Not hard to do…leaving Perplexity, perplexed.
Hmm. Frederick Pohl fan? His Heechee series discussed uploaded memories into AI extensively.
I’ve never heard of that writer, but I’m sure I’m not the first to wonder about that scenario
AI has no moral code. Intelligence without morality can only lead to evil.
Agreed, this will not be a good outcome. It will have no morality, only what it believes it to be, right.
I can see where you are coming from, but you went off the rails at the “working less hours” stuff. Come on. We have been hearing that BS for how many decades? I remember in the late 1990 there were many articles bemoaning a critical issue that we had to come to terms with, as a society. That was, with all this technical innovation and the growth of the internet, people will start working much less hours. In fact, we are going to have a problem with people knowing what to do with all their free time!
Yes. That was well over 30 years ago.
As my dad says, work always fills the time. And speaking of my dad, let me give you an example from reality. In the 1960s, my dad worked for NCR. He had to do budgets yearly, which he hated. He had to get all the data of his costs and projected sales, itemize them, and come up with what his datacenter was anticipated to earn in the coming year. He had to get the data into a published report and sent Dayton, where he and the other managers would meet and present to senior management.
This involved my dad working on a desk-size piece of graph paper, “boxing out” every expense and every revenue stream, then have secretaries break out the data onto type written pages, copy them, put them in binders, and send them to Corporate. My dad hated it as it was a hassle and pulled him out of the field at work.
Now, if I had to do the same thing (and I have), so much time is “saved”. Once I had the data, I could organize in within sheets of an Excel workbook, make the graphs, insert them into Word myself, create the presentation, and email the stuff to Corporate. My time done in a fraction of what my dad spent, and no secretarial work assembling the pieces. Great time savings!
Except it doesn’t work that way. My boss, and my boss’s boss, know exactly how much time it takes to put together the budgets. So, it would be follow ups. “Give me a number if we expand your data processing room by 10%, factor in various types of mainframes with associated processing capabilities, and your real estate costs. Give me the breakdown at 5,7 and 10% growth profiles. We’re also piloting a new appilcation which will require training time. Plot that impact against sales. Oh, and and and…..”
By the time I will have done all this, I would have spent EXACTLY the same amount of time my dad did.
In 1960, NCR sold every cash register and mainframe computer it could build. And my dad sold out compute time in his data center EVERY year.
All this with graph paper, a phone, copy machines, and messenger services. Work fills time. Technology just changes the way we do the work. Show me one person working 20 hours a week and getting paid for 40.
Good comment.
To address your final sentence . . . I strongly suspect that you’re not working 20 hours and being paid for 40, but you’re working 40 hours and being paid for 80 – once you factor in material items like the size of your house, the fact that you have air conditioning, you get 5 weeks vacation, your car is unimaginably luxurious compared to those of 30 years ago, there are countless things that you DON’T die of, etc etc etc
Respectfully, hard to see how this is relevant. I THINK you are saying that technology has made people’s lives easier. In some ways, very true. On balance, technology has ripped off alot of our privacy. Automated bots drive us collectively crazy as we punch numbers on our phone when our banking account has been hacked, or we need any other support—waiting an hour or two to talk to someone. In India. I mean, why bother hiring people when you have a chat bot. There is no more going to a place and talking to the manager to get a job…better go on the “site” and fill out a form. We’ll get back to you!
And none of this has anything to do with the long-held promise that we would all be working a small amount each week. In fact, we are a more anxious, stressed out society, and some would argue even more overworked than 20 years ago.
As far as me? I drive a 1996 Taurus, which has a nice ride, I have kept it nice, and haven’t had a car payment since I can remember. I have lived or owned homes that had AC since 1969, I get two weeks of vacation and 5 sick days, plus holidays off, which is about the same I got 30 years ago. My three closest friends died of cancer, which is still not cured but there have been great strides in extending life. Unfortunately, non of that worked for them as they all died in their 40s and 50s, as did my dad.
Be sure to catch “Colossus: The Forbin Project” (1970) with Eric Braedan and Susan Clark and “The Demon Seed” (1977) with Julie Christie, Fritz Weaver and Robert Vaughn. Two movies way, way, way ahead of their time AI-Wise!
True, hours worked haven’t plummeted over the years, but we’ve grown tremendously richer. People have chosen to keep working 35-50 hours a week in order to have nicer homes, holidays, etc.
A friend of mine (we’re both retirement age) challenged my suggestion that we’re richer, because people are struggling, etc. Then as I probed, he admitted that his home was at least twice as large as his parents & they didn’t have central heat & air until near the end of their lives. OK, sure they never had a pool while he & his wife had a pool with a waterfall & a beach bar. OK, sure, his parents only traveled internationally a few times in their lives while he & his wife did so 1-2 times every year. And both of their cars were luxurious beyond his parents’ dreams and, sure, they eat lobster a couple of times a month, but things haven’t really gotten better.
“Or AI might have the ability to receive an upload of a person’s memory – his life – before his body dies.”
That’s actually the hidden plot of a movie called ‘Archive’.
The future is unknown and true there may be many exciting things coming. But try asking your present AI about Kamala Harris, the worst candidate and perhaps the dumbest to ever run for office, and see how much glowing bullshit you get – all copied directly from MSM.