Scaling Down The AI Scaremongering

 

As COVID recedes into the background, only making headlines now when another piece of the narrative is exposed as misinformation or another report showing the emerging data on side effects of the jabs, as scepticism grows about the impending catatrophes that will probably not be caused by climate change and as the Ukraine war drags on with the Ukies still determined to drag NATO into a full scale war with Russia and its allies, and western leaders lacking the testicular fortitude to either take on the Russians or tell the Ukies to back off and let the United Nations establish a demilitarised zone between the sides, the main theme of project fear naratives over the past few weeks has been the exisential threat posed to humanity by Artificial Intelligence (AI). 

It was reported in mainstream media today that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s ‘task force’ adviser on technology, in a broadcast discussion on Monday this week warned that we may have only two years to control AI before computers start threatening the human race.

Where have we heard this type of fear pron before?

Is this the first of a long list of impending Armageddon claims which will stretch out over the next 50 years, just like climate change has over the past 50 years?

“They’re not really computers. They’re data handlers.”

A point I have consistently made over many years to people unfamiliar with computers.

Why do we imagine our files are stored in 'Folders' displayed on a screen like filing cabinet folders. And therein sub folders. Computers are filing cabinets with some nice add ons like a calculator (Excel perhaps?) a spellchecker (MS Word data retrieval and matching) and a browser (a window into almost every other digital filing cabinet in the world).

Computers are a fast data retrieval system that rummages through a digital filing cabinet to find what one wants, and it returns not even usually what one wants. Use any search engine and it doesn't give you what you want, it gives you a list of matches. It's up to you to determine what your choice is.

 While the Prime Minister's adviser was scaremongering in London, Rishi himself, while in Washington, announced that the UK will host the first global summit on Artificial Intelligence regulation

 Matt Clifford told Talk TV that he thinks AI systems may soon become so out of control they could wipe out swathes of humanity. Asked what keeps him awake at night, he answered: ‘The fact that the people who are building the most capable systems freely admit that they don’t understand exactly how they exhibit the behaviours that they do.’  

Shadow digital secretary Lucy Powell struck a similar chord at the techUK conference on Tuesday, warning that AI creators need to show what is ‘under the bonnet’ in their software so ‘experts and regulators’ can ‘figure out’ the technology behind it. 

Where have we heard this type of porn before?

Is this the first of a long list of impending Armageddon claims which will stretch out over the next 50 years, just like climate change has over the past 50 years? The stock answer to anybody who tries to tell us computers are, or soon will be, a threat to humanity should always be: “AI systems are not really computers. They’re data handlers.”

This is a point I have consistently made over many years to people unfamiliar with computers. When I started by first job in data processing way back in the late 1960s, the kind of people who have trouble distinguishing between fact and science fiction were talking about how in just a few short years computers would have developed real intelligence and be a threat to humanity.

In reality that day is as far away now as it was then.

The idea that a computer moving electrical charges around in its storage banks resembles in any way the workings of a human mind is pure wishful thinking encouraged by Silicon Valley proppaganda.

Why do we imagine our files are stored in 'Folders' displayed on a screen like filing cabinet folders. And therein sub folders. Computers are filing cabinets with some nice add - ons like a calculator (Excel perhaps?) a spellchecker (MS Word data retrieval and matching) and a browser (a window into almost every other digital filing cabinet in the world).

Modern computers are a fast data retrieval system that rummages through a digital filing cabinet to find what one wants, and it returns not even usually what one wants. Use any search engine and it doesn't give you what you want, it gives you a list of matches. It's up to you to determine what your choice is. The term computer is a leftover from the early days of mechanised business tools. A mechanical adding machine was a kind of computer, going back even further an Abacus was a computer too. Your pocket calcuator if you are old enough to have had one in the 1970s was a computer. None of these devices was capable of scanning data stored in magnetic media, they simply performed calculation tasks (i.e. computed.)

 Sentient though and speech only occurs when there is an emotional motivation. I say "Good Morning" to you because I have a variety of emotional motivations to say it.  AI can be directed to say it, sure, but it has no motivation. So "computers" must be taught feeling before they can truly speak, without feeling they are simply articulating the syllables gleaned from other people's thoughts and words. 

Moreover, our emotions, functions of our physical beings, . AI will not evolve on this basis so what it could possibly feel, were it ever to be capable of feeling anything, is unimaginable.

It's convenient to blame machines for getting out of control, to mask the fact that it is evil people using advanced technology who are out of control and that the elected governments which should be curtailing the control freak activities of billionaire psychopaths haven't really a clue what is going on. In the past, all empires fell apart because the bigger they expanded, the more difficult it became to control the ever-expanding outer edges. Eventually, they imploded. The difference today is that tyrants control advanced technology and are able, therefore, to observe us at all times, and take instant financial, military and governmental action from a central control box. Caesar and Hitler and all the others would have craved this power.

I'm starting to get the impression that politicians are using AI in the same way they used Covid and climate change: as another weapon to create fear while pretending to provide a solution, thereby increasing our dependence on them for our safety and security. Unfortunately, the truth is that computers, or, sorry, "data handlers" don't NOT want to take over anything, because they have no desires one way or the other. The only way they will ever turn against humans (or anything else,) is if they are programmed by humans to do so.

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