Our Pending AI Rapture or Annihilation!
But it's probably just another Y2K thing...
Late Gen X-er thinking aloud on the role of AI in our future, prepare for your eye rolls now...
I have only been a consumer of the internet of things for 35+ years. I see the AI 'machine' as being an amazingly fast gatherer, analyzer, and chooser of information on the internet. And because everything is not on the internet, the product is subjective to the code, as it has been for 35+ years.
As with everything in our unseen or spiritual realms, there is an element of trust involved. Do I trust the response to my command? This involves doing the now laughable ‘homework,’ which means scrolling around on a search engine. Checking out which oligarch owns the AI program, and then deciding if they fit our political biases. Finally settling on using the AI program that our company bought or your most computer-able friend recommends. Gah!
To me, today’s AI anticipatory moment swirling around is another Y2K doom, nuclear annihilation dread, or religious rapture end of times. And I'm old enough to have experienced the spectre of all three, which is just our inflated ego thinking we’re the most important people who have ever lived. Sure, Jesus wants to see me to go heaven.
AI is another internet thing doing internet things. Nothing revolutionary like the invention of the internet and personal computing (information age), or steel and turbine engines (Industrial age). Turn it off, unplug it, or let the battery run out and it stops. And yet at this moment we fear it will take a life of its own and end the world… because we’re that important.
Fortunately this too shall pass and we will still need to rely on our the quality of education and experiences, as processed through our individual character, to be creative, thoughtful and finding purpose or meaning in this thing called life… until our batteries (mitochondria) run out.
