The AI Apocalypse We Are NOT Expecting

We all know the story by now, it’s been in a thousand movies – A.I. gains self-awareness and decides mankind is a pestilence and since A.I. controls everything, the world turns against us and we’re done for.  Lately A.I. mavens, in an effort to corner their marketplace and justify their over expenditures of capital raised, have been trying to frighten us with just such a tale. After four or five days of massive media coverage, commentary and discussion, most people are convinced that ain’t happening.  But in the meantime computers, the internet and the latest incarnation of this technology – A.I. – is having a deeply corrosive effect on our society and culture.  We may go out with a whimper, not a bang.

Let’s start here:

Research published in Science Daily, from the Taylor & Francis Group, found feelings that change over time may follow patterns that can be mathematically modeled with surprising precision.

“Just as we can predict population growth or endangered species, we can model the evolution of feelings within a couple,” said University of Lyon professor Laurent Pujo-Menjouet.

The so-called “AI revolution” is built on the presumption that everything can be reduced to math.  We have fallen prey to this notion.  The pandemic is just the latest example.  We locked ourselves in our homes, destroying education for a generation or two and putting our economy at serious risk because “the models all say….”  The models were wrong.  Why were they wrong?  Because people are not made entirely of math.

Science is all about building a mathematical model that can then be used to predict the behavior of a system.  Newton’s physics is a masterwork of such a model and is entirely sufficient for the lives that most people live on a daily basis.  It was certainly adequate to put men on the moon and it accounts for far more of the operations of nuclear energy than the far more exotic quantum mechanics.  But these models of late are not of the Newtonian type – they are statistical in nature which is math of a very different sort.  Because people are not made entirely of math, there will always be an outlier – someone that does not follow the typical path – hence the model will not always be right, even if it is mostly right.  Can we afford a culture built on mostly right?

Now consider this:

It’s difficult to gain admissions to the schools where I’ve taught – Princeton, Georgetown, and now Notre Dame. Students at these institutions have done what has been demanded of them: they are superb test-takers, they know exactly what is needed to get an A in every class (meaning that they rarely allow themselves to become passionate and invested in any one subject); they build superb resumes. They are respectful and cordial to their elders, though easy-going if crude with their peers. They respect diversity (without having the slightest clue what diversity is) and they are experts in the arts of non-judgmentalism (at least publically). They are the cream of their generation, the masters of the universe, a generation-in-waiting to run America and the world.

But ask them some basic questions about the civilization they will be inheriting, and be prepared for averted eyes and somewhat panicked looks. Who fought in the Peloponnesian War? Who taught Plato, and whom did Plato teach? How did Socrates die? Raise your hand if you have read both the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Canterbury Tales? Paradise Lost? The Inferno?

Who was Saul of Tarsus? What were the 95 theses, who wrote them, and what was their effect? Why does the Magna Carta matter? How and where did Thomas Becket die? Who was Guy Fawkes, and why is there a day named after him? What did Lincoln say in his Second Inaugural? His first Inaugural? How about his third Inaugural? What are the Federalist Papers?

Some students, due most often to serendipitous class choices or a quirky old-fashioned teacher, might know a few of these answers. But most students have not been educated to know them. At best, they possess accidental knowledge, but otherwise are masters of systematic ignorance.

The subjects this Notre Dame professor is telling us his students are ignorant about are precisely the subjects that teach us that people are not made of math.  I was a science student and I have always considered my education in the Humanities as quite minimal.  I am a bit of an auto-didact, but I was, at a minimum, exposed to all of what he says these modern students are missing in my educational life.  While some of it I read much more deeply into after my educational endeavors came to a halt, at least my education had sent me looking and when I graduated I could have answered all those questions.

Is it any wonder then that these students buy so readily into the notion that people are made of math?  They are not taught differently – they do not know better.  They have not been exposed to the richness of humanity – to its variability and unpredictability.

Finally, there is this:

In South Korea, single-person households are now 36% of the total, the largest category. Japan was at 38% in 2020 and is expected to reach 44% by 2050; Tokyo is already past half….

Three legal traditions have therefore, within about a year of one another, begun treating engineered intimacy as a regulated product. Whoever builds companionship at scale for a population of one will also set the working standards for duty of care, disclosure, crisis escalation and data use in emotionally dependent relationships with machines.

Two phrases from that pull quote should chill your soul, “engineered intimacy” and “builds companionship at scale.”  No longer are people being reduced to numbers for modelling purposes, now they are being imitated by numbers and serving as a substitute for genuine humanity.

The prospects are quite frightening.  Back, just after the Hugging Face incident I wrote, “If, eventually, thousands of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s end up wandering the streets and time travelling, it is going to have far more to do with our reactions than the AI’s actions.”  We’re never going to end up with the army of Arnolds, but A.I. may take over anyway – not by might, but because we are sacrificing our humanity to it.  We are learning to see ourselves in purely mathematical terms and denying our humanity, which leads us to be satisfied with “engineered intimacy.”  Once A.I. is our only friend and we each live in our little, isolated bubble with that fake friend, well, then A.I. has won.

Christians believe that God saved the world by becoming a human being.  I think we’d be smart to claim our humanity, not deny it.