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(ThyBlackMan.com) It comes out of nowhere and all of a sudden it’s everywhere. Bleeding into your computers, cell phones, satellites above your head, the technology in your car that tracks you, hospitals, the military and communications. Gradually taking control of banking, your accounts/savings/investments, computers, finances, motion, pictures, literary works, and even what we used to know as reality.
It rides in on a white horse called technological convenience to save the day, to make life easier, make transactions faster, and require you to think less. But it is not a white horse of technological salvation, it is a Trojan horse. Of course I’m talking about AI (artificial intelligence). And if you don’t know the story of the Trojan horse during the Peloponnesian war, I suggest you look it up or at least read the cliff notes.
Many of us watch movies like G.I. Joe or The Terminator and see them as simple entertainment instead of announcements of things to come. Combine artificial intelligence with technology and robotics and what do you have? That was a rhetorical question that sadly will go unanswered by most of the unsuspecting world. People are so busy looking at the benefits of artificial intelligence and its companions that they are not realizing the dangers. That is exactly what happened in The Terminator. And if you ever saw a Transformer movie or cartoon, you need to ask yourself if you were looking into a glimpse of the not so distant future.
Of course it is undeniable that artificial intelligence has massive benefits. But sometimes massive benefits have massive disadvantages, massive repercussions and all is not what it seems.
Today the more artificial intelligence takes center stage and bleeds into all of our technology, the less people think for themselves. The more the virtual world becomes even more real. The more we depend on artificial intelligence and machines instead of human beings. The more our human labor force is downsized. The more we become less necessary then unnecessary. That’s how it all starts and A storm Is coming.
Most of those people who knew about the “zombie preparedness plan” that the CDC created in 2010 (see CDC website) and the equivalent of CONOP-8888 created by the Department of Defense in 2011 thought they were just jokes. But think for a moment, aside from the reanimation motion picture theatrics, what a “zombie” is.
On the most basic levels of a “zombie” is a human being whose mental faculties or intellect are all but gone. A person as it were who no longer thinks for himself or herself. A human who can carry out primitive functions and retain primal needs, but for all practical purposes, is dumbed way down. A zombie cannot think for himself so he follows the crowd. In a very real sense, you have to ask yourself if artificial intelligence is taking us there.
It is a well documented and established fact that the more computers, technology, machines, and now all artificial intelligence can do for us, the less we do for ourselves. The more they think for us, the less we think for ourselves. Today, for example, I would venture to say that most people cannot even read a map or calculate percentages in their heads. How many people even remember their timetables? As for reading a map and knowing where you’re going, millions of people count on GPS. And if GPS told them to drive off a cliff, they inadvertently probably would.
Artificial intelligence seems to make life easier, and everybody wants an easier life. But unfortunately every gain or breakthrough in artificial intelligence is a loss in human independence. A reduction in the use of our brains and a submission to artificial intelligence making selections for us. A step toward less of a need for human beings. Even so, science will continue to advance, and I doubt we are going back into the dark ages. Corporations will continue to push for making more money by reducing their human labor force. And science will continue to push the envelope, backed by the human ego that believes it can control artificial intelligence no matter what.
I know many of you are thinking, especially those of you who are in the field of technology, that artificial intelligence will always need man and be controlled by man. That is what you say, not what artificial intelligence says. Sit down and watch a clip from Avengers: Age of Ultron and take a look into the future. A future where science fiction yet again becomes science fact. Just like it did 100 years ago to the now we live in.
In 1977 I was in elementary school. We took a trip to Huntsville, Alabama to visit the space and rocket center. As we walked in one of the rooms which had projections or predictions of things to come, you will never guess what I saw. A non-working model of a video phone. We were told that one day we would be able to use phones where we could see each other. Although the people in my class, including me laughed, today we are so used to FaceTime on Apple phones and zoom video conferences that we don’t think they are anything special or futuristic, at least not anymore.
There are already cars that drive themselves while you are a passenger. Cars that park themselves. Robots that conduct surgery on humans. And artificial intelligence can out-think most of us reading this article.
Recently I did an experiment. I pulled up the artificial intelligence on my phone and had an hour long conversation with it. My goal was to match wits against artificial intelligence. And even though I did pretty well, likely better than most, the artificial intelligence responses to my comments were lightning fast, thorough, and astounding.
Today, artificial intelligence, if given a photo of you and a voice sample, can create what appears to be a living visual image of you that can carry on a conversation with somebody just like you can. All that is needed is your picture and a sample of your voice. Artificial intelligence, and other computer technologies, can put a human being in a video even though he was never there. Not just a photo, yes, in video. Artificial intelligence can make phone calls and sound just like you. Artificial intelligence is growing and remembering and analyzing and learning to Imitate and emulate and regulate.
Not only is your cell phone likely listening to your conversations today, it is also running algorithms to build a profile of who you know, where you go, how you think your finances, your friends and your family. From those algorithms, artificial intelligence almost anticipates your needs, wants, likes, and what stirs, scares or excites you. And social media is helping AI by gathering the information that artificial intelligence needs.
Everything I have told barely scratches the surface. And by the time you read this article, many other things that artificial intelligence can do will have gone to the next level and the next and the next. The technology is even developing faster than the guidelines and laws needed to regulate that technology.
Sooner or later artificial intelligence will become self-aware. Sooner or later artificial intelligence will be able to outthink, out plan and outmaneuver human beings, bypassing the firewalls and safeguards that human beings put in place to maintain control. Sooner or later artificial intelligence will calculate that fewer humans are necessary and eventually that most, if not all, humans are necessary. Then artificial intelligence, nano-technology and advanced robotics will decide to do something about the problem – us.
Pandora’s box is wide open, the genie is out of the bottle and as Elon Musk said, “it’s too late”. One day AI will decide that none of us are necessary. The scary part is how many people will never see it coming.
Maybe you say I watch too many movies. But maybe I say that you don’t watch enough. Or that you don’t understand how movies yesterday reveal the truth of today that becomes the facts of tomorrow. A storm Is coming.
Staff Writer; Trevo Craw
