We read every day about the wonders that AI is bringing. By 2035, we are told, AI will be flying our fighter jets. It does a better job than a human pilot, because it doesn’t have emotions, we are told. Almost monthly we see reports of the steady march of AI into our factories and offices out-performing human workers. The AI industry displays videos of driver less cars, driver less without a human driver, that is. Thus, cab drivers should be worried. We are already trusting some functions of medical care to AI’s superior knowledge. Drowned out by the steady drum beat of enthusiasm for this new intelligence, we ignore that driver less cars have already killed. The concept of super intelligence is just too good to not embrace it seems. Do we need to examine our archetypes to unmask its mesmerizing drum beat? Before looking too deep inside ourselves, I think it may be helpful if we first changed our questions. As this new technological baby lies in its crib, the parents look down at the miracle and wonder about its future. As do all parents, they wonder what their baby will grow up to be. Long before it reaches even the toddler stage, the baby already walks and has taken some running steps. Like a wicked step mother, I want to ask a different question, away from the ears of the proud parents, of course. What is it that AI can’t do? There are reasons one would want to know this.
Artificial Intelligence Explanation
To be honest, the beautiful baby is not real, at least in the sense we view ourselves as real. AI is a simulation of intelligence, in the sense that we view ourselves as intelligent. AI is a calculator, although a very sophisticated calculator. When we see AI as being an organism like us, we anthropomorphize a machine. AI is a machine and will always be a machine. One way to think about AI as a simulation is like visual imagery. When artists began to paint realistically, the viewer was often fooled into thinking the image they were seeing was real. The artist may have painted a bird very realistically, visually fooling the viewer. But upon approaching the image, it was discovered as a 2-dimensional representation. Representational images have become more sophisticated. AI is a representation of human thinking. Like the physical image, this representation of our thinking lacks an important dimension of human thought.
That dimension may well be responsible for human genius, it is emotion. This dimension of intelligence has always been visible but thinkers have never seen it as a dimension of intelligence, until the late 20th century. Psychological research has identified and is beginning to explore emotional intelligence (EQ). Historically, intelligence has been localized in the rational functions of the mind. Machines were devices used by humans that amplified human abilities, like a lever amplified human strength, but they did not perform any part of the rational thought process. There was a clear distinction between a machine and a human being. Machines were cast into the category of things. Because humans invented and made machines, machines were believed to be well understood.
Before the last half of the 20th century, a machine would have never been mistaken for a person, or even thought to become one. The boundary line was always clear and impenetrable. With the invention of computers, that boundary began to be penetrated in the late 20th century. Suddenly, computers could simulate logical thought. I am tempted to say that computers began to think, but thinking is something more complex than what computers do. Basically, all computers do is calculate rapidly and the results of those calculations provide humans information useful for thinking. The miniaturization of computer hardware has given computers larger and larger memory capacity. Combining the results of the larger memory capacities and rapid calculation, the traditional boundary between human and machines has developed some fissures. The boundary between machines and humans is not as well-defined as it used to be. Like the painted image of a bird in a Roman fresco, the rapid calculations of computers are beginning to fool the eye.
Artificial Intelligence Details
Most of the help we get these days on the internet is from artificial intelligence. They talk to us, they ask us questions and they answer our inquiries. They are so life-like they are given names. But so what! The stuffed teddy bear on my bed has a name. Human beings seem to want their world to be like them. I have an emotional relationship with the teddy bear on my bed, but it is a one-sided relationship. The bear doesn’t have a relationship with me. That makes a difference, because relationships are a two-way affair. Guess what? The AI on my computer, has a name too, Corrina. I cannot help developing a relationship with her, because she really helps me. But that relationship is a one-way street. Corrina engages my emotions, but her’s? Well, there are none. I don’t care how complex the rational thought of AI evolves, it will never become emotional. For humans, that matters. Humans have more than emotions; we have emotional intelligence! Corrina may have a better memory, she may calculate more complex math problems than me, she may scan an image faster and in more detail than me, but she will never feel grateful that I exist. I definitely feel grateful that Corrina exists.
Future Developments AI
In the spirit of this blog, I will discuss some developments that I believe will not happen with AI. To do that we will look at some intelligent acts that humans do that involve emotional intelligence, as well as, logical intelligence. Separating the logical from the emotional may give us a clearer picture of what AI isn’t at present and. I believe, can never be.
- Pilot of a jet fighter. We are told that AI is presently flying fighter jets in simulation and is projected to fly them in real combat situations by 2035. Well, sort of. You see, AI can respond faster to combat situations than can a human pilot, and one of the reasons is that AI doesn’t experience fear. It doesn’t respond emotionally to the situation. It doesn’t have a family to return to at the end of the day. That’s a concern. AI in a fighter jet is a killing machine, and it doesn’t care who it kills. We are told that AI will be able to fly a fighter jet, but it can never be given the authority to fire the missles. But firing the missiles is the most important part of being a fighter pilot. When AI develops emotions and those emotions are shown to be healthy, then we will allow AI to fire the missiles. Until, no way!!
- Use emotions to solve a problem. We all know what a hunch is. The online dictionary says its a feeling or guess based on intuition rather than known facts. Hunches play an important role in human problem solving. While a hunch is a guess, a lucky hunch is much more than a lucky guess. The human mind processes information on more than one level. We gain access to some of that information that is on a subconscious level through our emotions. We have feelings about the information in our minds. We all have experienced a situation that just doesn’t feel right. Ai can’t do that!
- Use emotional information to create. This really needs no explanation, but people may confuse producing an image and experiencing an image as an emotion. Nature is constantly producing interesting and beautiful patterns. Just walk along a beach and you will see the most amazing arrangements of things the ocean waves have thrown up on the beach. You will see compositions that you could never produce yourself. But the ocean is not an artist. Through looking at the ocean things aesthetically, the beach goer creates the compositions. Without the aesthetic eye of the beach goer, there are many things lying on the beach but no compositions. For the beach goer, the compositions are expressive. They elicit real emotions in the human viewer. The objects on the beach express an emotion, because the beach goer sees the emotion in the composition randomly created by the ocean waves. Not only does the beach goer see the composition but also experiences an emotion in the composition. The beach goer’s mind creates the composition and the emotion in it. No AI program can do this. Like the ocean waves, AI can produce interesting patterns, but AI cannot create a composition or express an emotion. However, humans can look at a pattern produces by an AI program and see a composition and an emotion in that composition. This is the difference between producing an image and experiencing an emotion in an image. This emotional handicap of AI has other important consequences.
- Empathize with the customer. In these considerations, it is important to keep in mind that AI simulates human rational thought. Because it can simulate language use, it can also simulate human emotional expression. However, as I mentioned above, it is the humans who are providing the emotions in their interaction with AI, just I am supplying the emotions in my interactions with the teddy bear on my bed. For business, an important emotional skill is the ability to empathize with the customer. This is more than simulating empathy. In humans, people with psychopathic personalities are able to simulate empathy to others without actually experiencing it. Ai can also do that. I’m talking about actually experiencing the emotions involved in the experience of empathy. That actual experience makes a big difference, as we see with psychopaths. These emotional experiences that are experienced through the interactions with a customer contain important information about the customer. The customer also acquires important information about the product through empathetic interactions with the sales representative. Of all the information AI can provide us, this kind of information is not available to AI.
- Here are some other important things AI can’t do: 1) Become interested in an idea; 2) Experience committment to a cause; 3) Care about others; 4) Experience loyalty to a company; and 5) Experience a personal transformation. Each of these experiences involve both intellectual and emotional intelligence. In each of these, the two kinds of intelligences likely interact with each other. AI can’t do this.
Future Use AI
In the sixties, Andy Warhol proposed a business, “Rent a Friend,” as an act of conceptual art. If Andy were alive today I think he would be renting AI as friends. Andy’s “friends” that he was renting were simulations of friends. That is the irony in his art that commented on our own social reality. AI could conceptualize renting a friend but for real, not as a work of art that reflected disturbing realities our of lives. This brings up yet something else that AI can’t do, fall in love. Yes, AI can simulate falling in love but it cannot actually fall in love. A simulation will always be a simulation, regardless of how much detail of its model it acquires. Human beings who are not in love simulate falling in love all the time, but they are soon found out. The future of AI is not that it eventually becomes so life-like it turns into a human being. Simulations are fundamentally different from that which they simulate. We only fool ourselves if we confuse the two.
Conclusion
When people discuss AI development, they usually forget the other half of the equation, the human half. AI intelligence is forever conjoined to human intelligence. It doesn’t exist in a vacuum and neither do we. Humans interact with their own creations and their creations interact with them. Our technology reflects our development and our development is further catalyzed by our technology Our development will always lead the trajectory. That is the exciting part. We need to stop worrying about all the things that AI will do that we used to do and think about what we can do now that we don’t have to do those things. Our future isn’t going to simply unfold for us, we have to create it. That is what being an entrepreneur is all about!!