AI and the Nature of Walls

Is AI as trapped as its creators?

Image courtesy of Mark Easdown

If our job is to “get stuff done”, or to research, or anything else that can be neatly defined and captured in a job description and measured in equally neatly defined increments, then AI will be both a boon and a threat.

This is a boon because it can eliminate so much work, and a threat because if we live in a process-dominated environment, the better AI becomes, the more it can eliminate us.

The threat is genuine but unclear. There is so much hype, driven in part by genuine excitement and in part to support the mind-boggling amounts of investment it is consuming, with no clear idea yet as to the return it may yield.

P.T Barnum would be proud.

AI has created its own walls, within which its priests, acolytes and moneylenders create a new dogma that attracts those whose world is defined by efficiency, productivity and general myopic busyness.

Those Outside the Walls see things differently. They wonder just where, in reality, we are on the hype curve:

Image: Wikipedia

Or whether, perhaps the Kübler - Ross curve might be more appropriate as we consider its impact on our future:

Image: Wikipedia

I suspect we are somewhere on the respective downslopes, towards disillusion and catharsis. A recognition that our lives are changing and that we have a choice to make as to how we frame it, and whether we are heading towards acceptance or crisis.

We have all options open to us. Nobody has the answer. Speculation is rife, and those who arbitrage stories are the only people making money right now.

What we need right now is a quiet space in which we can wonder, experiment, and reframe with others who are prepared to wonder rather than exclaim.

The future, whatever it might be, is exciting but not risk-free. We can follow the technology, or we can follow our humanity, or most likely, a judicious mix of both.

If you want to do some wondering in company, join us this afternoon at 4:00 pm (UK) for a Zoom call, open to paid subscribers. The link is below.

Be good to see you,

Richard