The potentially enormous benefits of AI

AI came in really handy for us this past weekend. We were about to travel to Casper, Wyoming, and needed to know what check-in time was for our motel. So I asked “What time is check-in-time for C’mon Inn in Casper, Wyoming?” The answer came back,  immediately: 4:00 PM. We could have called the motel or gone to the website, but AI is making our easy lives even easier than they were already.

And, of course, AI is telling us the truth about unimportant matters, while lying about the big stuff. Just like Wikipedia, Snopes, Google/Bing/Yahoo … that’s the marketing plan, to fill in details on stuff like celebrity birthdays and movies, and lie about important stuff, like Climate Change, wars, 9/11, and even now-insignificant things like Jonestown, Waco, and Tiananmen. I’ve argued with AI about, say Newton’s Third Law, and the impossibility that jet airliners could cause a skyscraper to implode (says AI: The airliner impact set about a vibration that eventually eroded the structure).  I have asked about the impossibility that astronauts could withstand radiation in space, especially the Van Allen belts (says AI, they just went really, really fast, and scooted right on through!). **

I am yet to query AI about the other matters mentioned above, or Sandy Hook, OJ, Manson, Cosby, school shootings, serial killers … I don’t need to do that. AI is going to repeat the Lies of Our Times.

Is there any benefit then to AI? Outside of being under control of the masters of Intel for propaganda purposes, yes! I can see tremendous benefit in our daily lives, from driverless cars and semitrucks, engineering codes for roads, buildings and bridges (making them easter and faster to build and maintain), and in schooling, to name but a few applications of great benefit.

That latter, schooling, people might disagree that AI is beneficial. Why bother teaching things that can be easily looked up? Shouldn’t the students have to invest psychic energy in finding the answers? Isn’t the effort by itself the point? Isn’t that what education is all about? The work ethic?

The more I think about it, the more I think no, there is no benefit in striving to acquire knowledge that is otherwise easily available. Hard work can now take us to better places than before. That idea undermines our whole education system, which is designed to imprison kids for twelve years, sticking them in desks and forcing them to ask permission to pee. Perhaps, due to AI, kids will be allowed to get up, wander around, interact with others, pose problems without an easy solution (what indeed IS the Van Allen Belt? How did it come about? Is it there by design?, just for instance). Perhaps, heaven forbid, most teachers will become unnecessary!

Teachers are nice and well-intended people, don’t get me wrong, and especially at younger ages, where they are a substitute for mommies. That’s a nice thing, a good thing. But as time goes on, teachers reach the limit of their limited knowledge, but keep on teachin’, and so we are faced with the necessity of producing students who are smarter than their teachers, rarely achieved. How can kids excel, unless highly self-motivated, to jump the low bar of teacher competence?

I occasionally wonder what I’d be like as  teacher. I’d most likely struggle with the restraints they are placed under, including inability to think beyond official science, history, and literature. I’d either have to conform, and turn off my brain, or to have approached the profession with a brain already under control and with any time-bombs long diffused.

Does AI offer a way out of this oppressive system of thought control? Yes! I think it does. All it takes is asking the right questions, arguing with the answers, refusing to be convinced by common wisdom … that is, outside of official propaganda. It is all within our reach now, and since it is early in the game, the beast has not been thoroughly housebroken yet. I sincerely hope kids will use this tool while it is useable, that they will do more with it than check motel check-in times.

___________________

** We recently had a comment here by Jan Spreen who offered up information on Apollo, more on the return trip from the moon than the journey there. It’s worth a read and did not draw interest when she posted it (it was quarantined due to too many links). If I understand correctly, Jan is saying that the command module would need enormous fuel requirements to hold its speed down on facing the increasing power of Earth’s gravitational pull on the return trip, so that the reality of Apollo was that the poor schmucks aboard would have atomized before even hitting the heavy planetary atmosphere. From reading her comment, I gathered that Jan’s own intelligence, rather than AI, allowed her/him to speculate. AI would surely have fallen back on NASA propaganda.