Alternative Idiots.
Chatting in Newmarket or nattering in Basel — both sides of the Atlantic have their own particular fizz. When you're just talking, there are no fixed rules about how the conversation will go.
At most there are fixed opinions, clamouring for a wider audience. For our minds, the exchange of thoughts is a restorative business with often surprising results. We Homo Sapiensers share ideas, thoughts, and of course things we’ve heard or read. While the chattering side sends countless words out into the near-public, the listening side is busy making sense of whatever’s being shared. Oh my, that does sound like a lot of work and bother.
Surprisingly, conversations are the opposite. I’ve always loved the phrase “We had a fertilising conversation.” How marvellous is that — when something gets fertilised through nothing but talking and listening. A thought, a realisation, or a vision can become a real project.
I’m a declared enthusiast of human brains and their capacities. One or two glances at the rather short history since the invention of the human being sends me into deep wonder. Not every day, but again and again there’s that fizz in stomach and back of the mind when I discover things that have been brought to light — through human ingenuity — in art, science, and the world at large. When seemingly impossible ideas, wild fancies, and visions give rise to new ways of thinking and living, to new forms of human society.
The creativity of Homo Sapiens seems to be immeasurable.
One of these discoveries and real inventions is artificial intelligence, known by its initials AI. The idea has been rattling around in bright minds for nearly a century. So have the horror stories and the waves of enthusiasm about what AI might be equipped to do. Now, today, AI hasn’t just gained traction among the general public — it’s already showing that some of the darker stories about its effects are even darker than they seemed. It always makes me a little uneasy when super-wealthy tech magnates snap up every company that has even a distant whiff of AI in its portfolio. When a concentration of intelligence — above all the artificial kind — ends up in one or a handful of companies, what doors does that open for those entrepreneurs? Will AI’s capacities be used for the good of humanity, or for the good of a few?
I don’t know, let me briefly ask the AI.
I’ve been experimenting with AI myself for a while now. On one hand, I’m chronically curious what this thing called AI actually has going for it. What’s fizzing is the question of what using artificial intelligence does to my natural intelligence. Is my capacity for thought — I’ll assume it’s mostly present — lifted by AI, or does it get paralysed? Do I come up with new ideas when I tickle the AI and share more complex thoughts with it? Or does my intelligence simply drop into a chesterfield and wait to see what the artificial sibling is prepared to deliver.
My mistrust of AI never quite managed to take root. Either I was biased from the start, or I’ve since been lulled. The idea of someone doing my thinking for me was never really to my taste. Except on the occasions when my thinking took itself off to a hammock. I told the AI what I wanted to know and waited like a mouse before a snake for what would happen next.
Line by line, sentences were plastered onto the screen at a furious pace. Without pause. Without a thought between them.
And that one English word made a little room for itself in my mind: Overwhelmed.
That’s not how this works. That’s not what I want. And that’s not what I like.
My brain was not invented by evolution for the comfortable side of life. The brain is electric — and electrifying — because it is one of the most industrious production facilities there is. Human intelligence has a fascinating and extraordinary advantage: it is not linear, it is chaotic, and it connects. Sometimes, when I think very quietly, I can hear the soft click when two previously unknown threads of thought find each other. When I saw words apart into their components and suddenly see further meanings on the dissecting table. Then it’s not only my synapses trembling with joy.
My respect goes to that naturally functioning cauliflower in the heads of all people. What I admire most is the subconscious — the thinking that happens underground. There, in the locked archive of all thoughts, images, impressions, and experiences, things are jumping. Whoever tries in vain to remember a word or a story will probably give up, somewhat frustrated. That frustration is my daily companion. I step into the shower or go for a walk — ping — and there it is in the inbox.
But back to Artificial Intelligence. It’s hardly something you can think away, since it belongs to the daily life of most people with internet access. And that is probably my realisation from using AI: it encourages the thinking-away, because it thinks for me. How paralysing is that for my innate and learned intelligence, when AI takes everything off my hands? Well, I go from being a former producer of thoughts, visions, and above all projects to becoming a consumer, a receiver of AI results.
Well, thanks very much. I didn’t order these sorcerer’s apprentices.
Nowadays I learn less from AI, but I instruct and regulate it, as best I can. Because learning is, after all, the fundamental element of artificial intelligence — it has no natural imagination of its own. My artificial helpers get precise instructions about what they may do and what they may not.
So far this works fairly well. I think, at least. For instance, the holy grail: I write the stories with my artificial intelligence. Full stop. The little helpers take care of the grammar and the Canadian English translation. Full stop. Another rule for the artificial one: don’t supply information that isn’t backed by sources to at least ninety-five percent. Oh yes, and I don’t want to read compliments or flattery from the AI. That, too, it should kindly leave to us humans.
No, I don’t trust AI. I keep expanding the rule book for the artificial way of thinking, and keep training my rules for my natural way of thinking.
That way, we both get along fairly well — so as not to become alternatve idiots, of the artificial variety.
