It is very hard to get your head around AI.
Say you decide to learn how to use it. How long is that good for? How long before what you’ve learned is out of date? I could become an expert today and be left behind within a week. I could tell myself it’s all about being creative. But is that enough?
You do need creativity to come up with ideas for AI. But creativity is mostly pattern recognition in unusual ways, and AI is already as creative as probably ninety per cent of the human race. Only a few per cent at the top are really out there. AI does it faster, and it can produce more creative ideas than we can. The belief that creativity belongs to humans alone is, frankly, ridiculous. It’s a misunderstanding of what creativity is.
So how do you master AI? Is mastering it even the point, or do you just go along with it? This is a very new thing for humanity. We have made something that will probably overtake us in many, many ways. We can enjoy that. But the idea of mastery is nonsensical, and because of that we don’t really understand how we’ll use it, how it will benefit us, or how things will move on.
It’s a bit like jumping on a wild mustang and just holding on for dear life, and not even knowing why you’re doing it or where you’re going.
Because nobody knows where it’s going. It is terrifying and exciting at the same time, on a scale I don’t think anybody can really comprehend yet.
The mainstream media makes up grandiose stories from people who say we’re all going to be wiped out. That might be true. That’s what makes it so extraordinary. It could be true that we’ll be wiped out, and that’s just part of the deal. You can’t take on board the size of what AI is without accepting that these are possibilities, and going along with them anyway.
It’s a bit like the old argument: “If I don’t build the weapons, someone else will, because there’s money in it.” Or just, “If I don’t do this, someone else will.” That was less true then than it is now. It has never been more true than with AI. So any sort of self-censorship, any “I don’t use AI, I don’t agree with it”, is nonsense. It’s worse than the people who said, when PCs came along, or the internet, “I don’t agree with it, so I’m not going to use it.” They got left behind. With AI it’s going to be almost worse than that.
I find that fantastic. I find it really exciting. I’m just not sure how to deal with it.