Could this be the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it?
“Just because you can doesn’t mean you should”. No idea where I first heard that but that’s how I feel about the world of Artificial Intelligence.
I’ve been getting increasingly concerned about the acceleration of AI, as more and more geeks seek to make theirs the best. Companies are trying to hockey stick the growth of AI, handing over more and more decision-making and control to machines. If they fall behind, then they lose the race to their competitors.
I have said so many times now, that almost all the wrongs in this world are down to Greed, Ego & Power. One could argue that natural disasters are nothing to do with these of course, and that would be correct. I said almost all.
Before I go any further, I feel compelled to point out that I’m not a crackpot conspiracy theorist. They tend to focus on disproving things that have actually happened. That’s not what this is. This is a concern about something that is going to happen. That’s not me saying this. This isn’t about some bloke from Essex worrying about something his brain came up with.
I just read (31st May 2023) that over 350 of the world’s most distinguished experts in AI, including Geoffrey Hinton, the creator of ChatGPT, have waved a flag to tell us that AI could trigger the extinction of humanity.
What, what? The actual extinction of humanity. End of. Finito. Done. Cooked. Over.
They have said, in a joint statement that tackling the issue “should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war”.
What really concerns me is that that statement is backed by the head honchos of the leading AI companies!
I’ve got an idea… STOP! Oh I forgot, Greed, Ego & Power.
Our illustrious leader Mr. Sunak has of course stated that we will be at the forefront of nipping this one in the bud. Yeah right.
Dan Hendrycks, director of the body behind this, said “People were much too afraid to speak up earlier,” he said. “This establishes it as an intellectually credible concern.”
So STOP!
There’s a whole, very credible list of people backing this. All of them in the industry.
Erm, STOP?
When we got ChatGPT to write an article on Woodfarm, I thought it was kinda cool. I thought it was really fun that something that I created from nothing, now had such a presence on the internet that this AI thing was able to pull all that information and write a piece about my brain child.
The thing is of course is that you can put anything on the internet, so it wasn’t that cool.
Unfortunately it’s a lot deeper than that.
The pace of the race
I wrote a song around six years ago called Rise. I kind of had this fear back then. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not a soothsayer, I’m not a mystic, I am however somebody who has watched futuristic films whilst growing up, which somehow seems to be getting a little bit closer to reality.
This song that fell out of my head, tackles the issues that I’ve just been writing about. Here are the lyrics if you’re interested, they should be fairly self-explanatory.
‘Rise’ by Carl Scott, from the ‘The difficult second album’ by Elephant in the Room.
Anti-social media, devouring the young
Look what they’re feeding ya, what we’ve become
Staring with hollow eyes, a digital trance
The glow that can hypnotise, no longer dance
Never before have we seen such a thing
The rise of the robots. Soon they’ll be King
The silver screen replaced by, the one in your hand
Mobile killed the video star, progress unplanned
Tick tock, tick tock, time flying by
Days turn to weeks in the blink of an eye
Never before have we seen such a thing
The rise of the robots. Soon they’ll be King
It was a different world, when I was young
The pace of the race
Never before have we seen such a thing
The rise of the robots. Soon they’ll be King
Tell & show the latest news, replacing show & tell
No longer sing the blues, send the demons to hell
Never before have we seen such a thing
The rise of the robots. Soon they’ll be King.
In summary then, it looks as though the geek shall inherit the earth. Well, their toys will anyway. Only time will tell I guess.
Photo by Rock’n Roll Monkey on Unsplash