AI is Okay, but Can People Be Trusted with It?
I covered Arista’s latest quarterly financial results earlier this week, and I’ll probably comment on Cisco’s pending quarterly results, due at close of trade tomorrow, later this week. Today, though, I’m going in a different direction.
When I launched this digital shanty last August, those who knew of me and were familiar with my limited oeuvre likely had certain expectations regarding what they’d find here. They probably anticipated, not unreasonably, that I would produce more of the type of fare for which I was narrowly known.
Well, life is full of surprises, and we usually don’t care much for them when they burst onto the scene like the Kool-Aid Man coming through a wall at an art gallery.
As anybody who’s followed the arc of commentary here will attest, I haven’t followed a prescribed remit. Yes, I’ve written occasionally about datacenter networking, as well as other types of networking, and I will continue to do so periodically, as interest impels and circumstances warrant.
More often than not, however, I have chosen to stray from my well-beaten path, going wherever my enthusiasms take me, on peripatetic journeys great and small. I will continue wander eclectically across subject matter, promising only to be fully engaged each time my lumpen fingers clatter across the keyboard.
If I have an interest in a topic, and I feel I can hold forth intelligibly and reasonably intelligently on it, then I will do so, without fear or favor. Each of us, I believe, amounts to more than his or her job description, and now that I am no longer constrained by an externally affixed professional label, I can comment how, when, and where I see fit. That’s a good thing, I think, because an independent, even perhaps eccentric, human sensibility and perspective will become more valued as AI and algorithms extend everywhere, relentlessly flattening and homogenizing information and “content” in the process.
Indeed, one theme that has recurred here is AI, not just today’s generative AI (genAI) but also the emerging field of artificial generation intelligence (AGI), which is likely to have far more profound implications than the former.
I’m not approaching AI from a careerist standpoint. My interest is disinterested, in that true sense of the word. I don’t work for an AI employer – I don’t work for anybody – nor am I acting as a consultant for a massive technology corporation pushing AI. You won’t see evidence of genuflection or servility here. I am interrogating the subject with as much impartiality, incisiveness, objectivity, and healthy skepticism as I can muster. Sometimes I miss the mark, my reach exceeding my grasp, but it’s not for lack of trying.
More Skepticism, Please
There’s too little skepticism in the IT industry, especially about the motives of the principal players. Behind every technological wave, including the current AI boom, are self-interested investors, board members, and corporate chieftains. They’ll usually err on the side of hyperbole, because understatement doesn’t usually work as a sales tactic.
Despite all the recent hype, though, AI is a big deal. It will have positive and negative impact across industries and geographies. Some of the ramifications might even be dire. Should such catastrophic eventualities occur, however, the blame should not be assigned to the AI, which is but a neutral technological artefact, a product of human endeavor. Instead, the responsibility should be borne by the people who chose to train and apply AI negligently. Iniquity is an eternal scourge, and AI is just the latest technological advance that affords unprecedented breadth, depth, and scale to mayhem and misadventure.
There will be some good to come of AI, don’t get me wrong. When we look back on this period from the 20/20 perspective of posterity, however, we’ll probably decide that matters could have been handled a lot better. That’s almost always the verdict, whether we want to admit it or not. It was certainly true of the Internet, which was initially perceived as a means of sharing and propagating the sum of human knowledge and wisdom, but it fell a little short of that exalted mark. Instead of a whole heaping of enlightenment and sagacity, we got a surfeit of porn, spam, scams, and torrents of anonymized verbal abuse on social media. The fault, dear reader, is not with the technology, which is but a tool. There’s no reason to think humanity will somehow discover (or rediscover, if we wish to be generous) its better angels just in time to harness AI responsibly.
Whenever a neutral technology is created and emerges into the public realm, we have an opportunity to use it for good or ill. What invariably happens is that the technology is applied by people for some beneficial outcomes – scientific breakthroughs in health and wellness, medicine, and nutrition are good examples – but too often we also find a way to restrict the distribution of these advances to a select, highly remunerative minority. Arguably worse, we also find a way to apply the technology to frivolous or pernicious ends. People make these choices, and – I hope you’ll forgive my candor –they tend not to reflect well on the integrity of humanity.
In such circumstances, it helps to have a sense of humor. The only problem is, as technology moves from sideshow to main event in the human circus, the stakes grow higher, and that is undeniably true with the onset and evolution of automated intelligence. The clown car is still designed and engineered by people, but the vehicle will soon be driving itself for the benefit of a small number of well-heeled pranksters. If it crashes into the audience, how many of us will be laughing?
An analogous tale recently unfolded that demonstrated why we humans can’t be entirely trusted with even modest technological novelties. You might have heard or read of The Portal, an art installation that comprises two large circular screens that allow residents of Dublin and New York to communicate via a 24/7 live video feed. The high-minded goal was to remove “borders and differences” and to “experience our world as it really is — united and one.”
The Chasm Between Theory and Practice
But lofty theory and worldly practice diverged, as they often do, with predictable, if unedifying, results. I quote from an article published in The Times (UK):
“Who thought a portal connecting Dublin to New York would be a good idea?!” one person wrote on Twitter/X, sharing footage of a man holding up a picture of smoke coming out of the World Trade Center.
“That doesn’t represent Ireland very well when you do that,” Adam Nunan, a cruise ship audio engineer originally from Dublin and in New York while the ship is docked, said after the images flashed on the screen. Dubliners said part of the problem was its proximity to the pubs of Talbot Street.
Over the weekend a “very drunk” woman was led away by police and arrested after “grinding” her backside against the screen. “Basically she was there for about 20 minutes very drunk and was slapping and grinding against the Portal before guards stepped in,” Liza Linnane, who filmed a video of the incident, explained in the comments of her Instagram post.
Later, one young man pulled up on a scooter and shouted “Tiocfaidh ár lá”, or “Our Day Will Come”, which has become a defiant slogan of the Irish republican movement. It was not all one way, however.
“It took at least half an hour before a guy in a flannel top on the New York side gave the middle finger to the Dubliners, who repeated the gesture back at him enthusiastically,” The Irish Times reported.
And so it goes. This unseemly tableau resulted from a two-way video link between two large cities on either side of the Atlantic Ocean. Generative AI, though decidedly more modest than its ultimate successor AGI, will still raise the mischievous ante considerably, and that’s only among the users, putting aside for a moment consideration of the ethical disposition of the entrepreneurial class, incentivized to commercialize the technological as aggressively as possible.
I can’t tell you exactly where things are going, but I can confidently forecast that we will experience a few major detours and no shortage of ominous dead ends on the road to what is pitched today as AI nirvana.