There’s much debate and punditry about the ethical, economic, medical, and scientific impacts of AI, as well as its social and political threats. No matter how advanced or sophisticated AI is today, it’s already here and it’s maturing at breakneck speed. I don’t think there’s any way to get the genie back into the bottle. I’m not even sure we should want to try.
Instead, I’m curious if the conversation were reframed to consider that there is nothing artificial about AI, would that influence public sentiment and policy? The excitement about the possibilities that AI presents, as well as the potential threats it poses, are, in fact, the potential and threat of humanity itself. AI uses the same source information and processes that data using human algorithms, which are inherently influenced by human biases. The difference between humans and AI is the sheer quantity of data, and the speed at which AI can parse and process that data.
Intelligence is the aptitude to grasp truths, relationships, facts, and meanings. Another definition is the capacity for learning, reasoning, and understanding. Certainly, one cannot deny that computer programs have a high aptitude for acquiring information and recognizing patterns within sets of data.
The Intelligence Quotient (IQ test) gauges and quantifies the ability to use information and logic to answer questions or make predictions. IQ tests begin to assess this by measuring short- and long-term memory. Machines can obtain, store, access, and process more data far faster than humans. Perhaps an average AI bot is a genius compared to an average human.
Many choose not to focus on the memory and regurgitation of facts, but rather on the more nebulous concepts of reasoning and understanding. Reasoning is the process of forming conclusions, judgments, or inferences from facts or premises. Isn’t that what computer programs and AI do? While imperfect, we rely on computer models to predict weather events, military movements, and economic cycles.
The question remains, are software programs or machines learning? Humans learn by observing behaviors and patterns. We consume media, such as books, articles, films, and art. We listen to influencers, such as parents, teachers, clergy, politicians, and community leaders. We draw from the collective knowledge of our predecessors. Until recently, human knowledge was distributed among millions of people across every continent. To access even a tiny fraction of that information one would go to a library and scour secondary sources, such as microfiche, reference books, encyclopedias, and almanacs.
All that information now exists on the Internet. We learn from the same primary sources, but now those sources are democratized whereby a wider range of resources and information is consolidated and accessible to more people in more places than ever before. AI is referencing the same sources and “facts” that we are (even if inaccurately - e.g., Wikipedia). Humans and AI programs retrieve, absorb, and analyze the same data with many of the same inherit biases – only at extraordinarily different rates. There's nothing artificial about AI. It's us on steroids.
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