AI [A.I.] Again

If you type AI like the way I typed it in the title, perhaps people think it’s AL (Al), so I’m going to call it A.I. out of convention. I am not talking about the name AL (put here in all caps for emphasis), but rather, I am discussing the technogical and societal phenomenon of A.I. Artificial Intelligence is what it stands for, and I’m sure you’ve seen it in the news so this paragraph was probably entirely unnecessary.

I have always said A.I. has always existed, virtually. It’s almost as if people forget that tools exist. There’s all this hype about A.I., and people forget that hammers and screwdrivers exist. I suppose people get hyped up about the latest technological breakthrough, perhaps, and they think it’ll either (a) make them a lot of money or (b) lose them a lot of money. I think that may be what it comes down to in this case.

As a translator, I fall more into camp (b), but let me explain something. I am not that afraid of A.I. And before you think, “this guy is insane,” let me explain myself.

In a certain way A.I. is anything created by mankind that aids in any way. So, I don’t think my hammer and screwdriver examples were too far off the mark. Yet I am not even arguing for an integration of A.I. as it’s commonly known in the media (although one could easily debate about whether there are multiple significances of A.I. in the media). I think A.I. is not only something entirely different than what it is commonly thought to be, but also that it is not to be feared at all.

Imagine this with a rational, cool-headed mind: you are contracted to do a job as a laborer on a house. You have the choice of using a hammer to nail nails into the framing of a house, or you have the other option of trying to place them in manually, with your hands only. This is a bit of the problem I wanted to discuss. Which are you going to pick? I hope you picked the hammer.

The A.I. problem is a bit more complex, as it involves data structures and what not.

But think of it this way: any tool that man creates can be manipulated for his best use. So that is one of the key reasons I feel that A.I. is not to be feared.

Another reason A.I. is not to be feared is that it will not reckon with the human mind. I don’t mean that A.I. can’t be “smart.” I mean that A.I. is precisely nonhuman. Therefore, it is not to be feared that it will “take over humanity” or something of the like. Maybe I exaggerate, but maybe it serves a function in this text. Imagine the hammer taking over society. When the hammer was invented, did it severely affect humankind’s ability to do what humans do? I don’t really imagine so. I think the same is true of A.I.

There seems to be no impending doom from A.I., therefore.