I was at a get together with a bunch of family members.\u00a0 And, as is the case with gatherings of this sort, we talked about a variety of subjects of almost a ridiculous range; Joe Pesci\u2019s guitar playing in the shower, the theory that Alzheimer\u2019s disease is an autoimmune disease, a recent positive experimental result in the search for dark matter, the likelihood that artificial intelligence will achieve self-awareness and a bunch of other stuff.\u00a0 But the topic that had the most separate conversations over the course of the day was AI and the data centers that are being built to support it.<\/p>\n
And I heard a range of opinions.\u00a0 Everything from AI was the granddaddy of all bubbles that would shred the current tech boom once and for all, to the opposite opinion; that AI was about to create heaven on Earth where the productivity created by AI would allow us to live our best lives while problems like limited resources and affordability would evaporate in a world awash in material wealth.\u00a0 Well, who\u2019s right?<\/p>\n
I\u2019m going to guess that both these scenarios are fringe ideas that don\u2019t realistically represent what\u2019s currently going on with AI.<\/p>\n
Whereas there probably is a case to be made that the trillions of dollars of infrastructure being assembled to allow AI to \u201ctransform every part of human industry\u201d may fail to provide a positive return on investment and disappoint Wall Street.\u00a0 But I would assume that would cause a bear market, not a complete meltdown of the world economy.<\/p>\n
And as for AI creating an earthly paradise, I think it\u2019s more likely that AI is going to cause a major disruption in employment markets that will be a net negative impact on everyday people until the changes caused by AI begin to equilibrate in the economy.\u00a0 At that point there will be a new reality where the higher productivity will allow for the standard of living to improve.<\/p>\n
So, AI will be neither a panacea or a catastrophe.\u00a0 It will be just another change in the environment that human intelligence brings about as it attempts to increase its control over the physical universe and optimize the way that humans interact in what we call civilization.<\/p>\n
But one thing I am sure of.\u00a0 We will all have to get used to talking to bots almost exclusively.\u00a0 And for this reason, I really hope that AI gets much, much better at training them to understand English.\u00a0 Every time I have to struggle through trying to explain a customer service problem with a machine that is as dumb as a bag of hammers I can\u2019t help but think that the Unabomber had something in that manifesto of his.<\/p>\n
But despite all this I guess I\u2019m basically optimistic about the future of AI technology.\u00a0 I can already notice a great improvement in the quality of the answers I get from AI\u2019s like Grok today as compared to a year ago.\u00a0 They definitely have made these things smarter and more reliable than before.<\/p>\n
Oh, and on a personal note, I had one of my cousins buy a paperback copy of my book when he found out about it.\u00a0 I hope he likes it.\u00a0 He might tell his family.\u00a0 And he has a big family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was at a get together with a bunch of family members.\u00a0 And, as is the case with gatherings of this sort, we talked about<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3773],"class_list":["post-38008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","tag-artificial-intelligence"],"yoast_head":"\n