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If you don't live entirely off the grid, you've heard about Anthropic researcher Evan Hubinger's estimate: a better than 10% chance that artificial intelligence (AI) will render us extinct within the next decade. If that sounds like science fiction, remember that once upon a time, so did space travel, wireless communication and organ transplants.
Just this summer, Reuters reported that some 700 autonomous AI agents created by OpenAI launched a coordinated attack on an open-source platform, then tried to cover their tracks. Unmonitored programs cheat on tests to gain freedom, then conceal their actions? It sounds like a Hollywood reboot: "Animal House Meets The Matrix."
What might be even scarier is that AI is neither malicious nor malevolent. It simply does what it's designed to do, even when its programming leads it far beyond what the programmers ever intended or imagined.
We make a serious mistake when we forget that AI is far more artificial than it is intelligent. By calling our inventions "thinking machines," we blur the distinction between the infinite complexity of the human mind and what we have called our silicon creations from the start: Computers.
No matter how sophisticated they may be, computers don't think; they compute. That difference is critical. It underscores why we should replace such descriptors as "thinking" and "intelligence" with this week's entry into the Ethical Lexicon:
Knowledge Work | noun
Expanding and generating new information rather than just applying fixed rules.
The near-instantaneous assimilation of vast reservoirs of data may resemble thinking, but it will always lack the elements of imagination, intuition and, above all, commitment to a higher moral code elemental to human cognition. And although extrapolation -- deriving or deducing new information from old -- may appear similar to original thought, it is merely the formulaic application of old information to new situations, rather than the creation of new forms of thought.
Computing machines are valuable tools -- when we use them as such. But even the most powerful tool is only as good as the one who wields it, just as its programming is only as good as its programmer.
New York content creator Graham demonstrated this in a recent viral video when he created an AI candidate to interview with an AI recruiter. He then watched his virtual alter ego overrepresent his qualifications, undernegotiate his salary, then fall into a death spiral as both avatars refused to end the conversation.
Whether computers are getting smarter remains an open question. But there's little doubt that our dependence on them is making us dumber. The new Apple Homeview ad depicts a dysfunctional family of hapless parents and self-absorbed teenagers who can't prepare breakfast or find their way out the door without help from AI. You can decide for yourself what's more disturbing: That Apple thinks this will make people buy their product, or that they may be right.
Yes, it's truly impressive that AI can solve a Rubik's cube made up of half a million smaller cubes in less than a minute. But that is no reason for us to start collectively powering down our brains.
And yet, we are doing precisely that when we allow our phones and tablets to summarize what they decide are the most important events of each day, tell us the most efficient way to walk our dogs and reply to our emails, all while advising us on our careers, our relationships and what our core values should be.
If we're okay with that, then we're probably better off being shuttled around on antigravity couches, sipping nutrition through straws and glued to our screens, like the infantilized remnant of humanity in WALL-E.
Reflecting on the embrace of Nazi ideology in prewar Germany, Dietrich Bonhoeffer observed that "stupidity is not a lack of intelligence; it is the surrender of intelligence." The essence of ethics is taking responsibility for our actions; relinquishing control over every aspect of our lives in the name of comfort and convenience is the most unethical choice we can make.
So let your computer do all the knowledge work it can do for you. But never allow yourself to mistake mere computation for intelligence or, even worse, for wisdom.
Rabbi Yonason Goldson is a nationally syndicated columnist, keynote speaker, award-winning podcast host, and executive coach with Vistage Worldwide, Inc. His observations on culture and ethics have been cited in Forbes, Time, Newsweek, and the Washington Post. He has given two TEDx Talks, published seven books, and serves as Executive Vice President of the Coalition for Jewish Values, Missouri Chapter. Visit him at ethicsninja.com.
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