AI and its ambitions

The AI revolution has been underway for a while now. The hopes to wipe out humans, and replace them with AI robots to reduce costs and make knowledge/ decision making accessible to all. Technological change/ automation always comes with labour displacement; yet the prediction markets always somehow believe it reduces jobs for people and reduces the hours/ "burden" of work. As discussed on various finance/ news media, society does not seem to accurately predict the implications of technological change, and they underestimate e.g. humans realising they can achieve higher levels, or new things/ innovation with new technology, therefore actually increasing the hours, and thus, need for work.

To go off on a mild tangent, I am not opposed to access to education for all. In fact, I think an entire population having a base level of skill and knowledge is actually essential for a well functioning society. It is good public schools exist, and that there are people willing to take on the difficult task of being a public school teacher. I know I wouldn't be a good one, given the patience and intrinsic motivation required to work in such jobs. I believe serious and well-meaning public school teachers, deserve more recognition than they typically tend to get. Every catchment area knows which individuals they are.

In my previous blog post about grocery stores (Fiscal policies), I discussed the unintended consequences of providing good/ services at a price lower than it's true cost: you end up teaching society to undervalue the very thing that they should actually value, and make a priority. It seems that is what has happened to education. People don't seem to value education as they ought to, as evidenced by the dropping reading and writing scores etc. Unsurprisingly, the proportion of individuals that choose knowledge, is lower than those who see it as a phase of life. Celebrities have also shown there is a an alternative way to potentially earn high wages, without focusing on school. If you have non-academic talent, you can also make it big. However, I don't believe people are fully aware of the realities of that venture.

Knowledge creation, innovation, cultural progress of the arts, design and music etc. has been a long process for human race. It has happened over centuries, through generational investment and individual as well as group efforts. Granted, the methods used to make it happen were probably oppressive (hence all those revolutions etc. wanting the top to share). Society has moved on from such levels of oppression, and the availability of public resources has allowed everyone to absorb as much information about the world, if they want. Furthermore, with international travel, people aren't even limited by geography to experience and learn new things anymore.

AI models are dependent on the knowledge you feed it. Initially, employers and AI coders were incredibly hopeful about being able to leverage all the public information, and data they can access/buy that has been generated about individuals. As with any robot created to replace humans, it never truly succeeds in that objective. Why? The reason is due to biology (I know, I constantly say biology is the answer). It really is, however. Nature is so incredible that there are no two people which are an exact copy/ replica of each other. Everyone's talents and skills are their own. Even with identical twins, each twin is a perturbation, making them unique. Their thought processes, and the way they view things to make decisions, are still going to be their own.

So, how can AI replace people? They can replace perhaps what would be categorized as rudimentary tasks, which does not require much discernment or thinking. AI can obviously be improved as it is given more data, and that is what is being done. AI needs people to correct its mistakes, i.e. using human knowledge. Given what I said about knowledge accumulation - how time, effort and money intensive it is - why should I be so easily forthcoming to give it to AI? AI needs something I have. Perhaps my corrections aren't so essential? If not, oh well!