Why are we scared of Ai?

This week I am writing about Artificial Intelligence, Ai, or really technology itself. Because all technologies have been a form of artificial intelligence, from the very first pictures on a stone man’s cave to the machine that you’re reading this on today. A cave man’s painting was artificial because it wasn’t real, and it was intelligent because it was the work of the human mind. And that is what intelligence is. In its essence, intelligence is just the human mind. And this must be the case because the human mind is necessary for something to be labelled as intelligent. After all, it was humans that came up with the word, intelligence. Since humans define intelligence, the word can only hold weight if it is recognised by the human mind as such. Thus, we realise that the Artificial is not what we really fear. The real fear remains unchanged. The fear is that humans will place a greater recognition on the artificial than they place on you.

But can the artificial truly have greater significance than you? What are you? As Decartes once said “I think, therefore, I am” – thus, you are your recognition of yourself. Will the artificial ever be capable of such recognition? True recognition must come from a human being. If a machine congratulates us – how impassioned would we feel? What is an award if it wouldn’t be praised by a fellow of our age? Is recognition anything but status amongst our mates? Without emotional underpinnings can recognition be anything but fake? Without emotions we cannot truly recognise things. Because true recognition means resonance, it means reverberations in our heart, it means reverence. And what is reverence? Reverence is that sense of awe, that sense of bewilderment, that sense of devotion – it is recognition laced with emotions. And here is the key: artificial beings are incapable of emotions.

But why can a machine not have emotions? Is Artificial General Intelligence not emerging soon? However advanced Ai becomes, training data, parameterization and compute remain necessary. Whereas the impetus for emotion? When a baby whines or a mother feels joy– what are the parameters that map the roots of these? Biology cannot hope to profess an answer – perhaps we can find it from psychology? But to any learned psychologist the roots of our emotions are far from parametrized and in my opinion they never can be. And ultimately this a theistic view: for God is the root of emotions and God breathed intelligence into human beings; machines are but a tool, as grandiose as their capabilities may seem.

Nonetheless, following the release of Chat-GPT, we have seen a plethora of recognition. People are shocked by its abilities, they are in awe of how much it can do. But this technology simply means that new skills have to be learnt so that the tool can be used to further the endeavours of human beings. Transformers, the technology behind Chat-GPT, can replicate what humans do on a machine: it watches our actions and based on past evidence it can make an inference on what should be done next. Where should such technology be used? The best place is to accelerate the applicability of firmly non-machine functions. That is, service-based businesses. Service-based business are ones that software has not yet eaten and thus, opportunity abounds. Anything that is not on a machine: speaking, cleaning, lifting; will not be replaced by transformer technology and thus these are the areas that an intelligent being would focus their attentions.

But moreso, the intelligent being maintains that which is not at all open to a machine, the intelligent being must fight. Because a machine can only follow orders, whilst a human being has to make a choice. They are presented with options, and driven by emotions to choose between two, the good or the bad, the strong or the weak, the difficult or the easy; and this polarity of desire is felt by all human beings, the never-ending struggle between the right and the wrong. And it is this struggle that a machine will never have to contend with, being purely rational they cannot replicate what a human being must go through. That struggle for meaning, that will for being, that inner turmoil is something that assails us all. We are all engaged in an inner conflict, and we all have to fight with ourselves to do what is right. Really, it’s not artificial intelligence that we fear – but ourselves.