Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is a lot like having children. You feel like you REALLY want kids; but, when the first one is born, the only emotion you feel is an existential horror knowing you’ll be supporting this human well into their forties. We looked forward to artificial intelligence with that same emotion. It was going to solve EVERYTHING. Then, five minutes after it was created, we knew we’d destroyed the world, all of mankind and maybe a couple of dwarf planets. But, when did we go from decades of thoughtful and methodical research to hunting for landmines with a hammer and pitchfork?

Well, everyone said we could always “pull the plug”, if A. I. seems to be overstepping its authority… because a powerful computer who thinks a million times faster than people will have never anticipated that…

The biggest problem is that we and computers don’t want the same thing: AI learns from its mistakes and adjusts accordingly to fix whatever problem it has been tasked with. People also learn from their mistakes: How to blame others; how to fake a heart attack; and, most important, NOT to let anyone know about the mistakes.

Could quantum computers help with this? Well… yes and no… and also yesno, for some reason.

One benefit to A. I. is its ability to recognize patterns… like your spouse going out every Friday for “PTA meetings” when you have no children and the school burned down two years ago. Artificial intelligence can aid in analyzing large amounts of data and recommending solutions such as vandalism or divorce. A. I. is even used to help in medical diagnosis… which will be important in the future when healthcare becomes affordable only to the six richest people in the United States. Eventually, parents will stop bragging about having a child who’s a doctor and will brag that their IT child CREATED THEIR OWN DOCTOR, in Visual Basic of all things.

Artificial intelligence can place an image into a different background almost flawlessly. So, even photographic proof fails in the new subjective reality. Personally, I like the idea of placing me in backgrounds from vacation spots all over the globe so none of my friends finds out that I spent my two weeks off playing Skyrim in my underwear. And, if this technology isn’t used as a political weapon and soon, I’ll apologize to my ex for what I did to her car…

Of course, this will lead to the next leap in the world of pornography. Imagine a woman of any size, race and body-type available just by changing parameters on an application. So, prepare for a lot of blondes with large breasts… and, just for a change, a few blondes with large breasts and tentacles.

But, as far as psychology goes, this could be an important technology. Let’s say that you get turned on by a nude woman in a paper mache` hamster mask hitting you with a rake. Are you turned on because a nude woman wearing a hamster mask and swinging a rake is inherently erotic; OR, is it erotic only because you now know that there exists a woman willing to take her clothes off, put on a hamster head and swing a rake at a guy? Artificial intelligence could mean the end of pornography, causing millions of p.c.s to sit unused…

Most recently, the big scare has been that students can have their papers created by A. I. So, our children may graduate without the ability to string together sentences into a composition. I don’t want to alarm people, especially alarmists, but MOST of our children graduate without the ability to string sentences together into a coherent form. Before artificial intelligence, students relied on what they’ve always relied on: The really smart kid who charges fifty dollars an essay. From what I understand, he’s grateful for the rest…

So, should we be panicking? Well, as a general rule, we should… and, at all times. But, should we be worried about artificial intelligence? It does think a million times faster than the average person, and therefore makes one million times the mistakes a single person might make. But, it gives back something our political leaders covet more than gold…

… plausible deniability…