(Twelve-minute read)
Let’s start with this question.
Is humanity getting smarter or dumber with AI?
The answer has to be both, as intelligence per se cannot guarantee that one uses it intelligently.
We can find undisputed evidence of this by looking not that far back in history.
It took humans 200,000 years to think about God, soul, nature, world, life, and themselves. Our ancestors wrote million tons of Literature on all these topics and we still haven’t figured out any of these.
There’s more food wastage in the world than ever before although a large number of people are dying in hunger, malnutrition, and gross food shortage.
Although we know we are depleting Earth’s limited resources at a break-neck speed, there’s more over-production than ever before and more over-consumption than ever before!
For the sake of energy and resource conservation, we request the poor to consume less who already consumes way less, while we shut our eyes to the rich who keep consuming exorbitantly.
We invented the first atomic bomb in 1938 and the world’s first nuclear explosion occurred on July 16, 1945.
The concept of capitalism has many debated roots, but fully-fledged capitalism is generally thought by scholars to have emerged in Northwestern Europe, especially in Great Britain and the Netherlands, in the 16th to 17th centuries.
Ever since we have plundered our planet-destroying what we love. Heating what is useful to us. We oppose what is good for us. Then, we love what is bad for us. We adore what is damaging to us. We follow what is deceitful.
We believed we were invincible, most intelligent, and just the best.
Then Corona showed us how very weak, unprepared and vulnerable we are.
With all the information we have been able to gather to help fight the virus – there are still some who cannot follow the rules. This is the height of stupidity.
So we are intelligent but only to a certain degree.
There are conflicting ideas about how intelligence is measured.
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Is intelligence overrated?
Socrates held that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living.’
Intelligence is ‘the ability to think, reason, and understand instead of
doing things automatically or by instinct.
This is not beyond animals and even plants, they too can be said to be possessed of intelligence.
The problem with artificial intelligence is that is it artificial and does not have to confine itself to methods that are biologically observable.
It leverages computers and machines to mimic the problem-solving and decision-making capabilities of the human mind.
But when one considers that intelligence at its broadest, refers to the functioning of a number of related faculties and abilities that enable us to adapt and respond to environmental pressures.
So as we move toward an increasingly digital world Artificial intelligence cannot be considered in isolation.
Take the West’s obsession with analytical intelligence. It has had and continues to have, dire political, social, and, above all, moral consequences.
Everything we love about civilization is a product of intelligence.
All this is to say that what constitutes intelligence can vary quite considerably according to our values and priorities.
After all, people deemed to be less rational—women, non-white people, the lower classes, the infirm, the ‘deviant’—were not just disenfranchised but dominated, colonized, enslaved, murdered, and sterilized, in all impunity.
History is full of technological over-hyping.
Will we control intelligent machines or will they control us? Will intelligent machines replace us, coexist with us, or merge with us? What will it mean to be human in the age of artificial intelligence? What would you like it to mean, and how can we make the future be that way?
Why should we be asking these questions?
Because with AI there’s an enormous gap and there’s a paradox at work here.
We are living at a time when great advances have been made, and are continuing to be made, in many areas of science and technology. These advances are having a major impact on our lives, and this will probably continue to be the case for the foreseeable future.
This may, at first, seem to be a very positive prospect, but there are important reasons to be concerned with its benign effects.
As a society, we have not learned how to deal properly with the risks, especially at the early stages, when knowledge is sparse.
In today’s world, the benefits of AI have been seized by a small, wealthy elite.
If anything, regulation is getting weaker. As our technological abilities grow ever more powerful, the danger of this approach is steadily increasing. What would a wiser policy look like?
The most difficult problems involve new technology that has very obvious, attractive, characteristics, while little, or nothing, is known about the effects of long-term use.
Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in food products are one example.
Nanotechnology is another fascinating new area that is sprouting all kinds of new products. Its applications range from sunscreen lotions to more durable concrete, to improved ways to administer medication. But the same characteristics that make it so interesting and useful, also make it dangerous.
Cell phones addiction.
Whether this will lead to an intelligence explosion; and whether this is something we should welcome or fear.
Saying that “real intelligence has consciousness just pushes the problem further down the road”
The next problem is what is consciousness and can AI be consciousness.
To become so it would have to act independently.
As long as we manage to keep the technology beneficial
After all, today, we cannot go very far without having some considerable IT skills.
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While the large corporations profiting from this technology are strongly motivated to defend their products, often funding research to develop arguments in their favor, there is no adequate countervailing force.
Take profit-seeking algorithms that are plundering the world unregulated.
Surely they should be careful study by an independent public agency to look for possible harmful effects, especially possible consequences of long-term use before releasing for general use.
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When you look at the world we have today you could not be blamed for thinking that we are all suffering from world dementia which is disturbing our multiple higher cortical functions including memory, thinking, orientation, comprehension, calculation, learning capacity, language, and judgment.
As a consequence of our greed and our disregard for the health of our planet, we are now faced with the problem of producing energy that is carbon-free.
This is going to require a complete change in how we live our lives with our energy requirements produced from sustainable green sources.
Yes, we are currently addressing the problem with Climate Change Conferences that to date are barking down the wrong road.
Why?
Because all intelligence is telling us that there is no option but to generate energy from green renewable sources – sun – wind – water.
Taken together, this suggests that the only viable option (working alongside intelligent technologies) is to take the H out of H20 (with green energy) and convert it into Hydron gas energy totally free of CO2 when used.
When it comes to Genius AI is way behind humanity.
Genius is in contrast is more a matter of drive, vision, creativity, and luck or opportunity.
Intelligence is not in the cloud.
Whenever you use any service on the internet, you are connecting to one of many millions of servers located in one of many thousands of data centers around the world.
The energy requirements for these centers are estimates to vary from 200 terawatt-hours to 500 TWh and there are an estimated 18 million servers deployed in data centers globally.
If electricity continues to be a major source of data center energy and is generated from non-renewable sources, data center emissions could exceed the aviation industry which is currently responsible for 2% of annual human-generated CO2.
The data center industry is changing rapidly and how that will affect energy profiles is uncertain, but surely companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and their like should be using green energy.
Companies all over the world use cloud storage.
Finally:
Finances are intertwined in every part of our lives, and technology is quickly following suit, finding a way into every aspect of modernity.
They’ve been on a collision course for decades, and the integration of technology into finance was, as we see it now, eventually inevitable.
You’re seeing this now with new algorithms being used to determine credit worthiness, or generating profit for profit’s sake.
For better or for worse, artificial intelligence (AI) is a natural progression for us, and something that has the potential to make life much less monotonous.
AI and finance go hand-in-hand.
One thing is clear, blockchain will indeed eventually transform how the industry works.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
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