foo for thought

A bit of an insane title, but this is a point which is constantly brought up in social media to where I can’t ignore it. I think there’s a lot more psychological intricacies to this topic than big tech companies like to give credit for. Ever since AI started to have any resemblance of human in its utilitarian sense, we started to retaliate. It started as a smallish group of people arguing that it’s bad for the environment and it’s bad because it hallucinates, but the growing of the anti-AI movement makes me think it’s much more than the technology itself being bad for the environment or hallucinating. Computers are also bad for the environment and hallucinate and there’s not really an anti-computer movement (I’m sure there was at some point in time dad but there isn’t now).

What I believe is the motivator for the anti-AI movement is the idea that AI can replace humans. While technology has replaced jobs before, such as in the Industrial Revolution and other technological advancements, it’s never been… resembling of sentience. It’s never had a human-like voice. It’s never messaged back like a human would. It’s never tried to emulate feeling or emotion, or tried to give compassion back to humans. It’s always been a tool. A tool that we’ve used. Now, it’s a competitor to the human race.

I think it’s some sort of biological instinct to be scared of AI. Think about it – back in the days when there were multiple human-like species roaming the earth like Neanderthals, I can’t quite say they were all friendly to each other! The possibility of something replacing us is scary. Really scary. That’s why when you look at something very human-like, but not quite human, your brain activates a phenomenon called the “uncanny valley”, where you are literally repulsed by it, despite it looking more like a human than non-human like things. It’s quite literally embedded in our biology to be repulsed by things that resemble humans, because of the threat it could take over our species.

It’s so fascinating that I think we’ve made it so far in technology to activate this fear in people. We’ve made technology work so well that it can emulate humans, to an extent. I certainly don’t think it’s quite uncanny valley level (although the new voice on ChatGPT is scarily good), but it’s enough where I think it activates something in us. Something that screams, run from this thing, it’s going to wipe out the human race.

Something which I’ve seen talked about recently is friend.com. It was made by this Twitter guy as sort of an AI companion you wear as a necklace, texting you responses to things you tell it. Like a friend, only just a little electronic thing. This has gotten such insane backlash from, well literally everyone. Why not just… get a real friend? Why do you need to replace people with this? And I think there’s something to be said about that – the fact that we’re terrified of anything taking over the role of a human.

With all of this said, I don’t really think this is a bad thing. Despite me working on one of the biggest AIs in the world right now, I don’t really think it’s wrong to criticize AI. In fact, my take is that our human instinct is probably correct. There’s something to be said about human endeavors, about human progress. That’s quite literally the purpose of our existence – to live. To live, to achieve, to accomplish. If something else, an app on your phone can strip that away from you, I don’t super see why we’d be excited about that.

It’s not to say I don’t think AI is cool, obviously it’s cool. I just think it needs to change. We as the tech industry NEED to pivot AI from being human-like, to being some sort of companion, to the cold mechanical heartless entity that it really is. The AI doesn’t have vocal cords, so maybe don’t give it those. The AI doesn’t interpret language like humans do, why give it the power to express itself through language? It’s extremely misleading, given that AI doesn’t actually know how to do things, rather, it has a “pretty good idea” how to do things.

Now, “pretty good idea” is certainly enough in a lot of areas. In some fields like data analysis, I’d argue for more AI! It’s such an insanely useful tool, I think it should be embraced as the awesome technology that it is, instead of making it talk to you and be worn around your neck like a necklace. I think as a productivity tool it’s stellar – a lot of the questions we ask as humans are dumb anyways, so why not let the robot that never gets sick of your questions handle that?

There’s a plethora of areas that AI can be so so good in, and I think some companies are figuring it out accidentally. But the way that the industry is moving – I’m a bit scared it’s going to end up like NFTs. I think the idea of verifiable encrypted ownership via the blockchain is cool, but generative NFTs replacing the value of real artwork done by real people is not cool.

I’m going to research this phenomenon more, and maybe have more opinions later on how we can actually mold AI into the cold heartless battle machine that it should be used for. Because come on, nobody wants to wear a surveillance device around their neck.