"AI in the Age of Wokeness & Expanded Government"

 Peggy Noonan was right in her weekend column in The Wall Street Journal, “George Santos Has Got to Go.” He should not be in Congress. While he fits in with that august body of liars from both Parties, he is an embarrassment to the American people. But Ms. Noonan failed to address the most disturbing questions. How did he become the Republican nominee? Why did the Republican Party not fact-check him? Why did mainstream and social media fail to investigate him? Why weren’t voters in his district more skeptical? One cannot help but suspect that Republican leaders did not want to peer too closely at someone who looked he might claim a Democrat seat, and it is my guess that New York’s left-wing media gurus knew of Mr. Santos’ transgressions, but they preferred to disclose them after the election, when embarrassment to the Party would be more keenly felt. 

 

We are reminded once again of the wisdom of Mark Twain: “There is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress.” At any rate, today we start the Chinese year of the rabbit, a happy omen for what we all wish will be a good and productive year.

 

Sydney M. Williams

http://swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“AI in the Age of Wokeness & Expanded Government”

January 24, 2023

 

“Technology is a useful servant, but a dangerous master.”

                                                                                                                Christian Lous Lange (1869-1938)

                                                                                                                Norwegian historian

                                                                                                                Nobel lecture, December 13, 1921

 

Over a hundred years have passed since Professor Lange gave his speech upon winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1921. A few years later, Albert Einstein, made a similar observation: “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” Both men – Lange in response to the trench warfare of World War I and Einstein to the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – had in mind the destructive nature of modern weapons. Yet technology, generally, has been a force for good: from medicine, communications, factories, publishing, heating, and air conditioning, to transportation, information, food processing, agriculture, entertainment, sports, etc. Technology has increased productivity, enhanced living standards, and reduced poverty. It is not so much that technology represents a threat, it is how it can be used and manipulated.

 

Just as technology has become ubiquitous in our lives, so has government. We may disagree on how big government should be, but it has grown larger over time. According to data from the St. Louis Federal Reserve, in 1940, before the U.S. entered the War, U.S. federal spending, as a percent of GDP, was 9.2%. During the War years, it topped 40%. After the War, factories that produced tanks and machine guns reverted to making cars and washing machines. Government spending fell. Following the Johnson and Nixon years, it rose to the low teens. Under both parties, it has since drifted higher, reaching 31% of GDP in the recession year of 2020. With the economy recovering, the ratio declined modestly, but the trend toward higher spending remains. This increase in federal (as well as in state and local) spending has inhibited private investment. From 1950 to 2000, U.S. GDP growth averaged just over 3%, while, for the first twenty-two years of the 21^st Century, GDP growth has averaged just over 2%. The increase in government spending is not the only cause for slowing economic growth, but it is one reason, and perhaps the principal cause. (Other factors would include an increase in the average age of Americans, from 29.5 in 1960 to 38.8 in 2021, and labor participation rates, which have fallen from 67% in 2000 to 62.2% in 2021.) 

 

As the tentacles of government reach deeper into our lives, the role of artificial intelligence (AI) should concern us. It has powers we are just beginning to appreciate. In the current issue of National Review, Vahaken Mouradian wrote, “Don’t Rage Against the Machine: AI can create something beautiful by identifying and replicating the features that constitute beauty, such as smoothness, rhythm, elegance…, and symmetry…It cannot, however, obtain the sublime, because it does not have feelings; it does not have faith; it does not have the ability to think independently…AI cannot reproduce a humanlike psyche or develop one of its own.” Bots (robots) have a “brain,” which allows them to take in, retain, digest, and regurgitate data, in accordance with instructions dictated by whomever controls the input. An artist might use a Prisma Labs’ Lensa to convert a photograph into a work of art, or a writer might use Chat GPT to complete an essay. AI computers may be able to express through writings religious beliefs, music, poetry, love, hate, or fear, but they cannot feel them. They have what might be considered a brain; they do not have a mind that allows them to think independently.

 

While AI is limited to what has been inputted into its “brain,” it can be manipulated as to what output will reach its target audience, reminding one of dystopian novels, like George Orwell’s 1984 and H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. The ability to control human behavior was a concern expressed by theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking in an interview on BBC in December 2014: “If you try to create a thinking machine, then it will pose a threat to our existence.” Two years ago, Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, and Daniel Huttenlocher of MIT wrote The Age of AI and Our Human Future, which introduces the reader to the promises and perils of artificial intelligence. In a review, Kevin Roose of The New York Times posted his first few paragraphs into Sudowrite and asked it to finish his review.  “…within a few minutes,” Mr. Roose wrote, “the A.I. was coming up with impressively cogent paragraphs of analysis – some, frankly, better than what I could have generated on my own.” Computers have already defeated the world’s best chess players, flown drones, and launched missiles. They soon will drive cars and diagnose diseases. But will they be used in schools and universities to indoctrinate youth with a preferred ideology? If we believe that wokeism is infecting our schools now, think what is possible with AI in the wrong hands.

 

We must continue to innovative; however, we must ensure individuals remain free to think, to argue and debate, to read and opine on whatever they choose. Democracy and freedom depend more on diversity of thought and expression than on such wokeisms as DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) and ESG (environmental, social, and corporate governance). These policies, promote discrimination by physical traits, and they prefer identities over merit, even as the latter is blind regarding race and gender. LinkedIn ranked diversity and inclusion managers the second-fastest growing jobs over the past five years. We saw this elitism in the arrogant, platitude-filled speeches that dominated the World Economic Forum in Davos last week. We see this antidemocratic attitude in the requirement of signed “loyalty” oaths at cultural events (such as the ones at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, so humorously described by Gary Geipel in last Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal), and in the cancellation of conservative speakers and the shutting down of debate on college campuses.

 

Artificial intelligence can (and will) enhance our lives. But in the wrong hands, it aids those who wish to control what we do and how we think, whether the perpetrator is government, an organization, or an individual.  It is a threat that should not be dismissed. Combined with recent growth in government, it portends “Big Brother.” How to respond? Families should instill in their children values that have stood the test of time. And schools and universities should instruct students in the art of skepticism – to investigate and question, to think independently. Don’t trust AI’s formulaic answer to the question.