Sign of the Times
Einstein said “The human spirit must prevail over technology”
A guy like Einstein, with his stature, does not throw around an imperative like must loosely.
I guess at some point Einstein realized that technology, when unchecked, will either enslave us or destroy us.
Today, as I look around I see a world becoming more dependant on computer technology as I am sure everyone in the world does.
In a very short period of time cellphones have become an indispensable extension of our bodies.
This is especially so now that AI has come out of the closet and shown its true colors as the big fish ready to eat up the little fish … US.
Every other day there news reports of how AI will change our lives and not nessarily for the better.
For instance, I just learnt that there is a new 24 hour TV news channel where all the reporters are AI generated. These avatars, with their digitally generated voices, look every bit as human as you and me.
But the biggest danger that artificial intelligence poses is that it can become unhinged.
For instance, when it makes an error no one can reverse it. If you were to ask where is Paris and it would answer Canada, there would be no way to correct it, not yet anyway.
And the reason is that the AI systems that power chatbots like ChatGTP are programmed line by line as are conventional computer programs.
Instead, these systems learn on their own. They ingest vast amounts of data and identify patterns in language and use that to come up with the next word in the sequence.
Apparently, the people who built these systems don’t know exactly how they work … and that’s courting disaster.
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