"AI - A View from a Tech Ignoramus"
I do much of my thinking while taking solitary walks. Nature both soothes and opens the mind. I often find myself debating issues, looking for answers where none appear obvious. Walking through woods, meandering past a swamp, or crossing an open field I find helps see more clearly. We are fortunate in this part of Connecticut, and at Essex Meadows especially, to have nature close at hand. The photo depicts one of the trails on Essex Meadows’ property, a path that crosses a Birch-laden field – one I took recently while thinking of the complexities of artificial intelligence.
Sydney M. Williams
Thought of the Day
“AI – A View from a Tech Ignoramus”
July 7, 2025
“These systems absorb everything from their
training, including man’s darkest tendencies.”
Cameron Berg & Judd Rosenblatt
“The Monster Inside Chat GPT”
The Wall Street Journal, June 27, 2025
To borrow an expression, Artificial Intelligence is all the rage, especially Generative AI and large language models. Estimates of total investments in data centers, GPUs (graphics processing units), training centers and cloud-based applications will reach somewhere between $300 billion and $600 billion in 2025, or roughly half the total U.S. defense budget. One source suggests total data center power consumption for all of 2025 could reach 23 gigawatts, twice the total energy consumption of the Netherlands. The June 28-29, 2025 issue of The Wall Street Journal ran an article on how CEOs of “tech goliaths and heavy-weight venture capitalists are cozying up to a few dozen nerdy researchers,” as their specialized knowledge will be “key to cashing in on the artificial-intelligence revolution.” A few companies are offering pay packages for the highly skilled that can reach seven and eight figures.
There is no question that much good will come from AI, like keeping truckers awake on long-haul trips, performing medical procedures, making warehouses more efficient, speeding up assembly lines, providing stock portfolio selections, or editing essays such as the ones I write. AI will generate content for publishers and news outlets, and make more efficient accountants, lawyers and financial advisors. It may prevent accidents on the freeway. However in the short term, like with any new technology, jobs will be lost. But in the longer term, also as with past technological advancements, new jobs will be created, for the economy is dynamic and new markets will be uncovered. And we cannot ignore that while AI may be able to write a Shakespearean-like sonnet or paint a Picasso-like canvas, AI will never be Shakespeare or Picasso.
If I were sixty years younger – even without a talent for linear algebra and probability theory – I would be thinking of how to use AI in my job, home and every-day life – as a tool, not as a substitute for creativity or intuition, as long as it did my bidding and did not lead me. In full disclosure, I do not use AI, as I don’t want it to influence how I think or what I write. There are people who believe that AI is not just a tool, people like Yuval Noah Harari, professor of History at Hebrew University and author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, who see AI “as an agent, in the sense that it can make decisions independent of us.”
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms, sees AI as a solution to friendless Americans, that algorithms can be personalized, as in the 2013 film Her starring Scarlett Johannsson, a film that explored the nature of love and connection in a technologically advanced world. Alexandra Samuel, a technology researcher and author, wrote in last Monday’s The Wall Street Journal that “Viv,” a word-predicting machine, is the best career coach she ever had. She wrote of how the software that runs AI can be programmed, through training and sourcing. It can mimic most anything, including a preferred world view, one that may be politically correct but factually inaccurate. In our technologically-borderless world, what’s to prevent a foreign government from influencing the naive? The possibilities are frightening. In schools and colleges, Chat GPT may make the completion of a homework assignment easier, but it is likely to impede the critical thought process. We don’t want a nation of cynics, but neither do we want a country of Pollyanna’s.
It was an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal that best captured my concerns: “What Would Hayek Think of AI?” In it two professors from Northwestern University wrote of how researchers from Google praised an AI system that helped people find common ground on divisive political issues, based on the belief that conflicts stem primarily from failures in communication, rather than from a recognition that differences are more likely to come from distinctions in values. In the opinion of the two professors, the Google researchers they wrote about have a “misunderstanding of complexity itself.” The professors feared that such tools in government could lead to central planning. They point out: “Vladimir Lenin and his successors failed catastrophically because, as Friedrich Hayek observed, knowledge is inherently decentralized and dispersed throughout society.” It is why democracies do better than autocracies and why capitalism has proved superior to socialism – it is the “Invisible Hand” of Adam Smith, that the decisions of millions of people, individually (and independently) arrived at, are more beneficial to society than those of professional bureaucrats. AI can help in the decision process, but it cannot replace the diffused judgement and wisdom as reflected in the verdicts of millions of people, as they make purchases and select political leaders.
I have never used AI, so my concerns may be meaningless, and I am probably in over my head. But I worry about harmful consequences. I think of the Greek legend of Prometheus who gave knowledge to humans, so was punished by Zeus, and of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a sapient creature created from different body parts, a monster who created mayhem and committed murder. Eleven years ago when AI was in its infancy, Stephen Hawking, the late English theoretical physicist, told the BBC: “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race…It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever-increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete and would be superseded.” Hawking may be right. A lot has changed since 2014. AI is more technologically advanced, and it has become more human-like, possibly realizing some of Hawkins’ concerns. Perhaps government will erect guard rails, or will devise a way to control its growth. I don’t know. But in that, I am reminded of the title of Edwin Fadiman’s 1971 book: Who Will Watch the Watchers.
Much will depend on education – on our schools and universities. The world will always need philosophers, artists and musicians, perhaps now more than ever. Learning to think critically, to be skeptical, to question judgements and opinions, has never been so important, as is the teaching of history and literature – to read unbiased stories of our past and to appreciate great minds. The well-read individual is less likely to succumb to the siren call of Artificial Intelligence – at least to not forget that AI is a machine, an invention for the benefit of mankind, not an invention to replace, or substitute for, mankind.
Labels: Alexandra Samuel, Cameron Berg, Edwin Fadiman, Friedrich Hayek, Judd Rosenblatt, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Shelley, Prometheus, Stephen Hawking, Yuval Noah Harari
posted by Thought of the Day @ 4:27 AM
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