It’s been a minute since I’ve posted as I am deep into writing “The Engine of our Destruction,” a satire about Artificial Intelligence. The thing is, “Artificial Intelligence” is a contradiction in terms.
There are lots of lines that people tell us every day. Among them are “maintenance-free”, “guaranteed for life”, and the old standby, “no new taxes”. But the biggest of all, and the one that’s hot right now is “artificial intelligence”.
So, hey. There is no such thing as artificial intelligence. There never has been, and possibly will never be. There are several reasons for this, but here’s the main one: since we don’t know what human consciousness is, and therefore can’t clearly define human intelligence, how can we create a synthetic analog of it? But even if we could fully understand human intelligence, the notion that brute force algorithms running at light speed on silicon somehow magically attains this thing we call “intelligence” is obviously a fraud.
AI machines are pseudo-intelligent. They can learn, in the sense that they can recognize an erroneous path and stop before they go too far down that road. But think of this:
For most major tech advancements, the more mature and better developed a technology gets, the easier it is to understand. Unfortunately, it seems the exact opposite is happening in the world of artificial intelligence, or AI. As machine learning, neural networks, hardware advancements, and software developments meant to drive AI forward all continue to evolve, the picture they’re painting is getting even more confusing.
At a basic level, it’s now much less clear as to what AI realistically can and cannot do, especially at the present moment.
This presents a rich playground for satire.