Recently I checked both the spam and trash folders from my popular email provider and discovered two discarded emails from people important to me. I manually retrieved them to my inbox.
This has happened before and can occur again.
I mentioned this to both friends who lean left and who range right. Almost all remarked, “I never check those folders,” citing being busy or not wanting the hassle.
Understandable. I will not stoop to pick up a penny…though I would lean forward to retrieve a silver dollar.
We are relying more and more on “systems” to do more and more for us.
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Even before the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), there have been concerns about machines taking away human endeavor and control.
This appeared earlier when textile workers of the 19th century, known as Luddites, destroyed textile equipment as they feared machinery would leave them useless.
And the popular 1968 science fiction film, “2001: A Space Odyssey” had the computer Hal, which overrode human commands with its own “thinking.”
Recently a large cluster of scientists, scholars and futurists, including Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak, signed onto a letter calling for a “pause” in the research and development of more powerful AI systems “with human-competitive intelligence”.
A reasonable concern could be the merger of powerful artificial decision-making with powerful all-too-real weapons of mass destruction that are seemingly growing in number, lethality and potential perpetrators.
It seems that both humans and machines are capable of error. This can be unnerving when a vehicle swerves toward us on the road or irritating when a programming glitch brings a system down.
Nuclear weapons, initially triggered in error, could in turn trigger opposing systems to respond by retaliating in near to real time.
We may need to rethink what is intelligent.
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Philip L M Vaughan
Lake Edward Township
The Trust Project
