Why AI is Not My Greatest Worry

Chances are strong that nervous rumblings in your brain are the result of so many articles spreading fear about AI. Robots taking over the world.

AI’s dark in-joke might be such an article.

I have watched computers get smarter for over fifty-five years now. I started with 80-column punched cards, reading each card by holding it up to the ceiling lights and reading the holes; a slow process. I have written several smart programs one of which reduces two days of labour down to forty seconds.

In the 1990s I dabbled with Expert Systems.

The same morning that I read the AI article I read “ FOGO system 'overwhelmed' by plastics as industry urges public to get behind rollout “

I don’t worry about this recycling-fad. I have been doing something much more powerful for the past forty years – Reducing and Reusing.

I worry that municipal councils as large as Toronto Ontario have dropped compost-bin programs in favour of a special fleet of green-painted trucks spewing diesel exhaust, that trolls the city’s streets and laneways. Especially with the quote “If you give the person the right tools, they do the right job.”. It seems to me that the best place to tackle any problem is up-stream, which in this case means at the household and individual consumer level.

I worry that people are already brain-washed into a thoughtless “They will do something about it”, or worse, “They should do something about it”. If food suppliers decided to double the plastic wrapping of food overnight, consumers today would insist on a doubling-up of garbage collection, instead of boycotting the doubly-wrapped food packages.

I worry that “Living on the second floor of her apartment block, she has to take the lift down to the basement to drop off her food scraps.”

I worry more often because recycling has been promoted as the solution. “She says her generation had been taught the need for recycling and food was no different.”

I worry because people nowadays have two problems related to food:-

(a) The escalating cost of food which is then thrown into garbage bins and

(b) The lack of knowledge of the nutritional advantages of boiling food scraps to make stocks, broths, and soups.

OK, three worries:-

(c) The inability to understand that every part of the apple, the carrot, the potato and the pumpkin is not only edible and non-toxic, but is nutritious. As are dandelion and nasturtium leaves.

Now you see that I am deeply worried about the general state of the human mind.

My point of view is that we should be worried about human thinking, rather than machine-thinking.

My optomistic hope is that AI will take over control of our lives and cause us to consume less, to use better, and be less human than we are at this time.

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