Adding on to my previous Downsides and Upsides predictions about AI, I have two new thoughts.
UPSIDE:
As dialogue becomes a normal way to interact with our machines, human beings are going to become more verbal. We’re naturally going to get better at articulating our wants and needs, because that’s what we’ll be doing all day long. Currently our machines require us to work in an inhuman way, i.e. by pushing buttons and turning dials and looking at screens and typing on keyboards. When our machines are able to interact with us in a more human way using natural language, we’ll exercise and improve our verbal skills and even some social skills. In fact, the ability to state what you want clearly and efficiently will become paramount. English majors, your time has come!
DOWNSIDE:
I believe there’s going to be a profound shift in how human beings think about themselves, and it’s probably more negative than positive.
Check out this documentary on the story of how Google’es AlphaGo beat the world champion at Go:
The documentary is presumably meant to champion Google’s amazing achievement. And in a way it does. I won’t go into the details of why Go is such a complex game, but the article linked below from the Atlantic explains it. It’s a real milestone that an AI can win at Go.
How Google’s AlphaGo Beat Lee Sedol, a Go World Champion – The Atlantic
But the most compelling story here isn’t about the triumph of the programmers, it’s about the public humiliation and spiritual crushing of Lee Sedol.
Lee continued to play Go for a time, but he retired in 2019. And he retired because of AlphaGo. He said this:
“With the debut of AI in Go games, I’ve realized that I’m not at the top even if I become the number one through frantic efforts. Even if I become the number one, there is an entity that cannot be defeated.”
There’s something deeply sad about this.
We’re coming to the end of an era. The era when human beings were the smartest thing on the planet.
An individual could be the best in the world at something. And since we’re all the same species and share fundamentally similar brains, even if you weren’t the best in the world, the differential between you and the best wasn’t actually that much. Einstein was remarkable but the differential between his intelligence and anybody else’s was miniscule compared to the differential between human intelligence and the AI that is on our doorstep.
What happened to Lee Sedol is about to happen to all of us, individually and collectively.
If anything a person can imagine creating could be created faster, better, and cheaper by an AI, will human beings collectively follow in Lee Sedol’s footsteps and just retire?
I’m not sure what the full impact of this will be. Perhaps some of it will be good. I suspect Lee Sedol is happier now, enjoying a life as a normal human being, with relationships with other normal human beings, without worrying about proving his superiority at Go.
But a part of the human spirit might be lost. The human beings of the future won’t understand at all what it was like to live in a world where human intelligence was supreme, when it really seemed like anything was possible.