BETWEEN THE PROMISE AND DANGER OF AI

A Critical Reflection on Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity

        Computer                   Human brain
     _______________                  __~____
    |               |               /    ?   \
    |  0  1  0  1   |             /   ?        \
    |  1  0  1  0   |     x      |  ?    ?  ?   |
    |  0  1  0  1   |            \     ?    ?  /
    |_______________|              \____^____/

Today for some (including me) is a special day. Leap year, February 29, 2024. As I hadn’t written on my blog in a long time, today I decided to roll up my sleeves and bring something to you.

In a world desperate for new technologies, faster processes and infinite profit growth, promise and danger go hand in hand, especially in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). As someone deeply skeptical of the current race for AI supremacy, my concerns go beyond ethics and delve into the intrinsic computational limitations of these technologies. AI, in its current form, is an insatiable devourer of data, requiring computational capabilities that we simply do not possess (to be anything close to a human brain). The hope for a truly significant breakthrough may lie in quantum computing, but until then, we are playing with tools we barely understand.

Noam Chomsky’s reflection on AI sheds light on these concerns. He argues that today’s AI, including tools like ChatGPT, differs drastically from human intelligence at its core. While we humans are capable of generating explanations and understanding the world with a finite amount of information, current AI is based on correlating enormous volumes of data, without true understanding or creation. Chomsky even suggests that instead of calling this technology “Artificial Intelligence”, we should see it as “Plagiarism Software”, given its method of copying and modifying existing work and “trying” to go unnoticed. He also says, the AI does not create anything, but copies existing works by existing artists and modifies them in a way that can escape copyright. He asks: Is this the biggest theft of intellectual property ever recorded in humanity? One thing is certain, AI will undoubtedly be a revolution in the employment of repetitive tasks and will eliminate many jobs.

This perspective makes me question: are we moving towards an era of true innovation or are we simply getting lost in a sea of data, confusing quantity with quality? The promise of quantum computing brings some hope, with the potential to overcome current limitations and bring us closer to AI that can truly learn and create autonomously. I highly doubt it. But until then, we must be cautious about the power we assign to these machines and the expectations we place on them. The future of AI can be as promising as it is dangerous, and it is up to us to navigate these turbulent waters with wisdom and prudence.

Ighor Toth