AI Will Not Save the World

It can do wonders--just not the most important things.

“The era of artificial intelligence is here, and boy, are people freaking out.”

That’s Marc Andreessen, the technologist and venture capitalist, in an essay in The Free Press, “AI Will Save the World.”  Well yes, some people are freaking out about artificial intelligence.  Most of us are just curious. Like every new technology—e.g. the invention of the hammer—some worry about the downsides (from hitting your thumb instead of the nail, to using it to kill someone).  Others begin to see nails everywhere and think the hammer is a solution.  To be sure, the more complex the technology, the greater the dangers and the greater the benefits. I for one look forward to seeing how AI unfolds.

In the meantime, there are the freaking enthusiasts to consider. Of course, you have to take into account that Andreessen is writing as a venture capitalist, so it’s in his self-interest to promote the technology.  Still I think we should pay attention to his rhetoric.  It tells us a lot about our culture’s values.

First a definition, which Andreessen seems to get right, as far as I can tell:

… the application of mathematics and software code to teach computers how to understand, synthesize, and generate knowledge in ways similar to how people do it. AI is a computer program like any other—it runs, takes input, processes, and generates output. AI’s output is useful across a wide range of fields, ranging from coding to medicine to law to the creative arts.

This, according to Andreessen, is what will “save” the world.  The use of religious language always raises the stakes, and perhaps some enthusiasts will admit to committing hyperbole.  Then again, many seem to take such language literally.  Here’s what Andreessen says AI will do for us.  It’s the first of ten benefits he lists:

Every child will have an AI tutor that is infinitely patient, infinitely compassionate, infinitely knowledgeable, infinitely helpful. The AI tutor will be by each child’s side every step of their development, helping them maximize their potential with the machine version of infinite love.

He says something similar regarding how everyone will benefit, ending with “The AI assistant will be present through all of life’s opportunities and challenges, maximizing every person’s outcomes.”

Anyone with a smattering of religious sensibility will recognize the allusions here to the Judeo-Christian God, who is said to be infinitely patient, compassionate, knowledgeable, helpful, and ever present for us. In addition to omniscience and omnipresence, AI is “a machine version of infinite love.”

There are categorical errors galore here—e.g. machines can seem patient but they cannot be patient. And a gross sentimentalizing of love, as if love is only patient, compassionate, and so forth, with no hard edges.  It’s a utopian vision that fails to take into account the darker side of human nature, which is ever present and about which AI can do nothing.

Andreessen goes on:

Every scientist will have an AI assistant/collaborator/partner that will greatly expand their scope of scientific research and achievement….

Every leader of people—CEO, government official, nonprofit president, athletic coach, teacher—will have the same. The magnification effects of better decisions by leaders across the people they lead are enormous….

Productivity growth throughout the economy will accelerate dramatically, driving economic growth, creation of new industries, creation of new jobs, and wage growth, and result in a new era of heightened material prosperity across the planet….

Scientific breakthroughs and new technologies and medicines will dramatically expand, as AI helps us further decode the laws of nature and harvest them for our benefit.

The creative arts will enter a golden age, as AI-augmented artists, musicians, writers, and filmmakers gain the ability to realize their visions far faster and at greater scale than ever before….

I even think AI is going to improve warfare, when it has to happen, by reducing wartime death rates dramatically. Every war is characterized by terrible decisions made under intense pressure and with sharply limited information by very limited human leaders. Now, military commanders and political leaders will have AI advisors that will help them make much better strategic and tactical decisions, minimizing risk, error, and unnecessary bloodshed.

The essay is well worth your time because he makes many valid points along the way. Still, ideas we should pay attention to include:

· the notion that increased information will lead to better decisions by leaders, including military leaders.  Not sure I see much evidence in history where increased intelligence has led to increased wisdom by political and military leaders. Leaders are tempted to lie and hide or ignore inconvenient facts as much as anyone.

· the notion that we will enter a new era of economic growth and prosperity—yes, probably for the world’s elite, but like all prosperous eras, many will be left behind and the income gap between rich and poor will become greater than ever.

· the notion that we can “decode the laws of nature and harvest them (my italics) for our benefit,” in which nature is something merely to exploit. 

At the end of his list, he tips the cap to better values:

Perhaps the most underestimated quality of AI is how humanizing it can be. AI art gives people who otherwise lack technical skills the freedom to create and share their artistic ideas. Talking to an empathetic AI friend really does improve the ability to handle adversity. And AI medical chatbots are already more empathetic than their human counterparts. Rather than making the world harsher and more mechanistic, infinitely patient and sympathetic, AI will make the world warmer and nicer.

Today we have more advanced technology than ever, and yet the most recent development (internet) has made the world anything but warmer and nicer.  And a previous advance, nuclear technology, has made electricity cheaper, yes, but has produced a dark cloud of constant fear of its very power--which when unleashed, would certainly make the world warmer but certainly not nicer.

What such enthusiasts fail to recognize is that technology actually sabotages many classic virtues. Our hankering for efficiency, for example, does nothing for patience.  Email and messaging make communication nearly instant.  But when the server is slow or a correspondent doesn’t reply to a message instantly, we start tapping our fingers as irritation slowly grows.  Before this technology, we were willing to wait days for a reply by snail mail.  Dishwashers, power tools, smart phones, and a thousand other convenience gadgets frustrate us when they don’t work, forcing us into a more laborious process, with aggravation to boot, to accomplish our task. As a power tool junkie, I know whereof I speak.

I do not doubt that AI will make us more efficient, productive, and healthy, and it is likely to give new insights in how to better manage some social problems.  It will also produce some consequences that we will deeply regret but, alas, learn to live with.

Yes, it will make us smarter--but wiser? No. It may have the ability to suggest a better course of action in this instance or that, but it has no power to make the human will do one thing rather than another.  Some of the smartest people on the planet have done and will continue to make stupid, senseless, absolutely disastrous decisions.  History is replete with examples.

To state what should be obvious: The way forward for humanizing the world is not more technical mastery but poverty of spirit, not mere happiness but the sensitivity to mourn others’ suffering, not more power but meekness, not hungering and thirsting for productivity but for righteousness.

No, it isn’t one or the other.  Of course we should strive to make life more efficient, productive, and pleasant for as many people as possible. And I suspect AI will help us do that, perhaps to a degree we cannot imagine right now.  But it cannot make us better people, which in the end is the only thing that matters.

Put this way, many will tut tut, “Of course, of course.” But I note it because I, among others, easily get attracted to the bright lights of promises of technology.  I need to remind myself that many of its promises are false and utopian, and that those who adhere to the preacher of the Sermon on the Mount are the ones called “blessed” and are promised a true utopia: “Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Grace and peace,

Mark

Image by Reimund Bertrams from Pixabay