DB x AI Part V: Artifactual Intelligence (9.26.24)

Are we there yet?

The four essays that preceded this one have collectively been a long read, so let’s wrap this up.

I asked three questions:

1. Disappointment.AI. Can we feel connected and socially indebted to a synthetic intelligence? Can we be successful human beings without the weight of expectation?

2. Hallucination.AI. Will using synthetic intelligence to perform routine tasks impair the scaffolding process that critical thinking skills are built on? 
   

3. Catharsis.AI. Will systems dependent on synthetic intelligence displace systems which serve an important secondary function in defining and strengthening social ligature?

I chose these examples to highlight that there is no area of our lives that the AI transition won’t affect - whether our interpersonal growth, our ability to contribute to society, or society’s role in shaping us.

None of this is happening by design. Nobody I have spoken to who is doing AI is trying to blow up the world. They are intelligent, compassionate people. They are trying to solve complex problems, and have admirable track records using cutting-edge technology to do so. None of them wants a world in which we are not challenged to grow, to be intellectually inquisitive, or to communally strengthen our sense of civic responsibility. We all intuitively know that this would be a harsher, more confused, less forgiving, world. So we are all playing for the same team, which is good news.

Photo by Iain Kennedy on Unsplash

What is harder to know is what to do about it. “Pause all AI” is neither realistic nor - given the police power a state mandate would entail - democratic. And, as I have recently explained, I believe state-sponsored or institutional solutions are inherently antithetical to desired outcomes for situations such as these. 

OK,What Now?

Let’s talk about my AI credentials - or rather my lack of them. As a tech lawyer for an international business, I look at questions related to AI every day, but there are hundreds of thousands of professionals like me doing the same. And while I did test some of these ideas with people doing AI who I respect, I am not a leading voice in AI or philosophy. I don’t have a TED talk or a published paper in the field. So: you may rightly conclude this was a waste of time for both of us - but I hope not.

Photo by Jason Rosewell on Unsplash

Here’s my pitch.

1. I don’t think one needs to be an expert in AI to ask these questions. I think you just need to be interested in people - what makes us work, what makes us better, what makes us whole. On this matter, my primary credential is my painful transparency about my journey. You can read the past year’s writings and judge for yourself if what I speak bears the hallmarks of common sense, wisdom and humanity. If it rings true to you, I hope I have earned the audience of your consideration.
   

2. Having raised and discussed these questions in various forums over the past year, I challenged myself to write this out to see if a more complete articulation remained persuasive and compelling. Re-reading my arguments, I remain committed to starting a conversation about this. I am not saying I am right. I am only saying I might be. And I think it’s clear that I am not framing the choice society faces as “do AI” or “don’t do AI”. Rather it’s about “how to do AI right”.
   

3. That’s where you come in. You are the most important part of what happens next, and here’s why. I think doing AI right means showing up every day - at work, at home and in our inner selves - in a way that takes time to understand, contemplate, and where appropriate, influence these outcomes. Choosing how to show up is a topic I write about all the time On Deeply Boring. It’s up to each of us to slow the relentless onslaught of reductiveness by insisting that we see each person more completely. It is each individual’s choice whether to pause and evaluate how each interaction over the course of your day can be made more meaningful with a dose of grace. If there is one takeaway I want you to have, it’s this:

   An act of giving by synthetic intelligence is programmed performance. An act of giving by artifactual intelligence is sacrifice. There is a difference, and it is one that matters - but only if you care to make it so.

Make It So

On my part, I’m going to keep writing and posting, and to try my best to live out what I believe. Some of my posts get 6,000-8,000 hits, some of them get barely a tenth of that. I have no idea why. It doesn’t matter to me. If it reaches one person, I trust that one person is all it takes to make a difference. 

Photo by Ben Robbins on Unsplash

That person could be you.

If something about what I wrote spoke to you, please consider how to further the conversation. Share something I wrote. Share something someone else wrote. Write something yourself. Talk to the people you love about it. Talk to the people you dislike about it. Bring the people you love and the people you dislike together to talk about it.

In all this, may we always be deeply boring; may you have the courage and curiosity to seek to understand what lies beneath the surface; may you be thrilled and overjoyed by the wisdom you find, or by the wisdom that finds you.

This is the gift of the mind we were given. May we each use it to steward the world well.

J