AI..are we screwed? Is it up to us?

Figured I would throw in my 2 cents here. I copied this from a comment I made about this video — I love listening to John Michael Godier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyV8dmorjRg

One way to view AI is to treat it like another person — although one with special powers — very broad knowledge, very fast, very inexpensive, and a lot more sociopathic (although that last point could be debated). But you can start by applying the same basic rules you would apply to any human like:

1. If you ask them for advice or to give you a rough sketch of something, take it with a grain a of salt, and make your own decisions. It’s just another opinion. We do the same thing with people. (i.e. don’t trust it more just because some people are telling you it’s smarter).
2. Don’t let anybody or anything have unchecked power. Not even the President of the United States does. And don’t put them in a leadership position to make decisions on their own. Have humans always involved in the decisions.

The average person can do the above. And we can hopefully educate the average person about these things….although given today’s political environment (and the cultural split that has been created), this is not so easy as certain leaders will use AI to continue to brainwash people…..the weakest ones first. And add deepfake videos to the list and ugh…..

A different kind of problem is when people are making business decisions to use AI and give it power because it’s inexpensive, faster, better, or because you can blame behaviors on the AI. Who makes these decisions? The average person doesn’t. And we’ve been dealing this for a while even before ChatGPT and advanced AI came along. For example:

1. Screening of resumes — do we really know how good of a job computerized screening is doing? Do we really know if we’re creating a homogenous environment where we’re subject to group think?
2. Online dating — a total cesspool of fake interactions where good and lonely people spend so much time trying to figure out how to attract a mate and share posts and tips on it, when in reality you’re going up against an upside down, evil system that hits us in the heart of our soul. And to make matters worse, it’s killed most nightlife in the city (especially alternative venues). Yea it’s good for people living in the middle of nowhere, but what about the rest of us? Who is really benefitting here? The platforms? Really good looking people? Conmen and Conwomen?

And of course this is going to get worse, because the average business manager is extremely self centered. The #1 rule in business, management in particular, is that people are selfish…they will do what’s in their best interest, and delude themselves into believing it’s the right thing. And this is really easy to do if you’re not very smart, and a lot of managers are not very smart, and this is an asset when it comes to being part of the machine. So when they make decisions about AI, is anybody really considering all the complexity around this? I was asked to evaluate AI at our company (I’m the senior/lead security architect of a $2B company), and we decided it’s a useful tool for code reviews, refactoring code, making suggestions, and writing low level routines to give a starting point and some ideas — but an Engineer is going to write the code. But if our competitors start using more and more AI code and put us at a competitive disadvantage (even in the short term), how is that going to work out?

Congress isn’t going to help for several reasons:

1. They’re too ignorant and stupid to understand anything complicated. They are actors and they are there to raise money. Period. I’ve met with and worked with several of them and many of their aids and lobbyists.
2. The political environment is designed for simple sound bytes, and trying to look good. Not actually measuring success and adjusting.
3. Too much corporate money in the system while many of the rest of us are busying watching silly videos and reality TV, and have no clue regarding how to engage in the political process. (This is by design)

We have a hard enough time dealing with unscrupulous and downright stupid people and bad managers without AI, and it’s going to get much worse. And these Tech entrepreneurs, we certainly can’t trust them! Take Elon Musk for example. Yea he’s smart, but not as smart as he thinks he is. He is just as capable of egomaniacal based decisions as the rest of us, probably more so. Just look at his actions of accusing people of being pedophiles, taking political positions that are directly driven by his business interests and ego and using his power over the platform and his “brand” to influence millions of people.

Are we as a society going to step up to the plate? I was a lobbyist for several years, including environmental lobbying, I seriously doubt it. “Organized Greed is More Effective than Disorganized Democracy”