Artificial intelligence. or AI popped into the mainstream news about a year ago. Naturally the pundits are predicting the end of the world, but they don’t specify how it will happen.
Apparently, the demise will start with the end of cursive writing instruction. After all, if it was good enough for Jefferson it should be good enough for fourth grade, right? How could we have put a man on the moon without cursive writing, but we did. All those engineering drawings were hand printed, aka lettered. So were the computer programs. Computers, even with AI, struggle with cursive. We got things done without cursive writing for most of history.
Cursive writing, like our arcane spelling, awkward imperial measurements, memorizing poetry or the proper way to set a table, are remnants of a value system used to separate those sages with that bizarre knowledge from the plebeian others. Until recently England persisted in monetary units that made change making equally mysterious.
We lived without AI too, but AI promises some revolutionary advances. Unfortunately, a possible, maybe imaginary threat: HAL from 2001. AI, artificial Intelligence, can produce excellent counterfeits that we have to guard for. Responsible publishers will disavow its use or identify it when it is unavoidable. Hollywood has been producing very believable fantasies for generations, AI just makes it faster, cheaper and easier. Generating a movie scene with AI also has much less environmental impact than building one, like the 7/8 size model of the Titanic’s port side.
AI has tremendous value for research, science and design. It can free humans from tedious tasks so they can be more creative. The technical drawings, often erroneously called blueprints, used to be carefully hand drawn in ink on vellum and copies made by tracing. AI can economically explore the most unlikely theories or designs just to see which ones might be worth experimenting on and which ones are probably worthless. Sometimes AI reveals that human intuition is best of all. New technologies often bring counter arguments, value vs risk. Nobel was criticized for creating dynamite, the first safe-to-handle explosive. People feared it might extend warfare. It turned out to be safe and valuable for construction but not much value militarily.
Steamboats and railroads threatened the time-honored animal-based transportation. People were afraid of boiler explosions, annoyed by the smoke and noise. Some feared that being transported faster than a horse could run would kill you. Early train wrecks made railroads seem unsafe but injuries per passenger mile were dramatically less than horse and wagon. Railroads made modern cities possible and less polluted. City streets in the 18th century were swamps of horse manure. New York City alone had to dispose of 10,000 tons a day! Railroads made it possible to have unlimited food and even fresh food in the northern cities all year. Electric locomotives moved the smoke far away. Automobiles and airplanes faced the same or similar objections but time has proven their value greatly exceeds their risks: WHT, April 24, 2017.
There was much fear of electricity, even Thomas Edison, the founder of the electric industry preached against AC, alternating current invented by Nicola Tesla as too dangerous. Our modern electric powered world would be nearly impossible if we stuck to Edison’s DC, which is complicated to transmit. Fortunately, George Westinghouse, the well-known inventor of air brakes, saw the value and backed AC.
AI is being overused in many industries to transfer the front office work to the customer. Obviously with self-checkout. Travel agents have been replaced by websites that make it possible, but hardly easy to book your own travel. QR codes instead of a menu or user manual. Chat bots instead of live operators and FAQs that answer a million potential questions in random order, but not yours. AI will be part of our life. It will change things, mostly for the better but it will be abused by some as sure as death and taxes. The Bible cliché “There is nothing new under the sun” is obsolete. Now the only thing constant is change. More change has occurred in the life of people living today than the previous 50 million generations.
Al Jolson, supersedes Ecclesiastes “You ain’t heard nothin yet.”
Ken Obenski is a forensic engineer, now safety and freedom advocate in South Kona. He writes a biweekly column for West Hawaii Today. Feedback encouraged at obenskik@gmail.com.
