It’s ‘AI or bust’ time

By DAVID KITTREDGE
AI or Artificial Intelligence is a phenomenon that is frequenting the news headlines of the present day. Artificial intelligence is intelligence exhibited by machines or at least mimicked by machines. Scientists are now trying to expand machine reasoning beyond the mimicking stage to full blown self awareness, perception and intuition. This is a newly traveled course of science that needs full oversight and guidance that is likely not in the capacity of us flawed human beings. Mores and manners will probably be overlooked along with the gray areas of right and wrong. Would AI ever feel guilt if it committed a crime?  Could AI ever feel emotion? Even if it could feel and show emotion that would be a very creepy situation and creepy we can do without, thank you very much. AI can probably be used quite safely to help perfect logistical problems that occur with the ordering and delivering of packages within our postal system or FedEx and the like. Let us employ AI to deal with these problems and oversee it’s track record to make sure it does not evolve into some kind of criminal enterprise. If AI is to be used, let us employ it where human lives are not involved.

     NI or natural intelligence is a resource we should continue to explore. Society should be searching for and developing more Einsteins. We have enough on our hands trying to keep our fellow human scientists in check without completely dropping the ball and unleashing a soulless artificial brain, dear God! I feel that the term natural intelligence is important enough to have it’s very own acronym, NI, just like it’s more famous and newsy counterpart,  AI. NI is an acronym used for a number of things such as a short form for Northern Ireland or a symbol for a company on the New York Stock Exchange, but I found no reference relating it to the term natural intelligence, so I would like to take the liberty of assigning natural intelligence it’s very own acronym.

     A portrait created by AI was just auctioned off for $432,500 to some chucklehead who apparently had way too much money. The work is called Edmond de Bellemy which is supposed to be a painted portrait of a man. Naming this work was akin to naming a puddle of mud you might find in a barnyard. By the assemblage of colored blotches used for the face it looks as though the AI is staring into some bleak chasm instead of capturing the animated and vibrant face of a human being. The top of the subject’s head has been lopped of due to the ill positioning on the canvass, which I suppose could be a symbolic attempt to compare the two intellects, AI versus NI. The artificial intelligence perceives the natural intelligence of the human depicted to be inferior. But more than likely it’s just a case of poor planning by the AI artist which is worrisome because planning is what AI is supposed to excel in. The portrait that was contrived appears soulless which is understandable because AI has no soul either and is probably incapable of perceiving the concept of soul. The illustration seems to be more a reflection of the artificially intelligent artist, vapid and lifeless.

     Another problem that the AI designers will face is that in order to a truly produce a painted work of art the AI would have to be synchronized with some sort of limb and hand that could wield a brush for instance and be able to use the utensil properly. It takes a few years to teach a human child to correctly hold a writing instrument and to use it properly.  Then many more years of instruction are involved to use a brush for the eventual goal of fine painting and often times this technique is not achieved at all. I imagine that scientists would rejoice greatly even if an AI controlled limb with operating fingers could dip a brush into a vessel of paint and properly load it with paint without creating a mess.   

     It is thought that AI could eventually leave human designers jobless, not unlike displaced factory workers who must travel to a foreign country to train the person who is going to take their job, in that the human designers who help develop the algorithms or problem solving methods used by AI would eventually be replaced by the AI they helped develop. The thing to consider here is the soullessness of the AI which likely will not integrate elegance and poetry into it’s designs. A car designed by AI would probably function well enough but it would probably resemble an orange crate with wheels or shoe box sedan of the former Soviet Union with none of the flowing lines that can make a car beautiful. The AI design would lack true creativity as when the human spirit is involved. It is said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and where AI is concerned there is no actual beholder because again the AI or artificial intelligence is just that, artificial.