technology

“Don’t go Anthropomorphic on Me”

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I do not think Donald Trump’s rebranding Artificial Intelligence to Super Intelligence is a good thing. I think it is a real misnomer. In fact, it is one step towards humanizing A/I. It reminds me of the movie Blade Runner based on Philip K Dick’s book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

A lot of people are preaching the end of humanity with the advances in A/I or S/I. In my mind, it is really nothing more than semantics. Is there something inherently being changed within this manufactured intelligences that warrants a name change? Is it more than a governmental rebrand? Is it like the New Coke debacle that took place in 1985 when Coke-Cola decided to dump its traditional Coke for something new? Oh, and that took a “real thing” belly flop for Coke.

Or, is “super intelligence” something much more. In Dick’s book he explores deeper forces taking place than just asking a chat bot to make a hotel reservation. According to litcharts.com Dick “suggests that empathy is humanity’s defining trait, contrasting it against the emotional detachment of androids.” My question is: would that same empathy be reciprocated, particularly if a human had to pull the plug on A/I.

Humanity has been living with some sort of dystopian end-of-the-world beliefs probably since man first started looking up at the stars at night and witnessed a complete lunar eclipse. These beliefs can be religious or from science fiction. On the science fiction side of it Orson Wells jump started the dystopian genre with his 1938 broadcast War of the Worlds. If anything, Jules Vern, Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas have proved Isaac Asimov belief that “today’s science fiction is tomorrow’s science fact. We are in the world of A/I science fact.

For the most part Science fiction has given us helpful robots like “Robot” in the 1960s TV show: Lost in Space to R2D2 and C3PO in Star Wars. And of course there was the rouge Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey and the Terminator. Both immediately opened us up the evil side of rouge A/I. Both introduced a doubt about “supper” intelligence cohabiting with humans.

But it is just not science fiction. Christianity itself is steeped in apocalyptic doom. The last book of the New Testament deals with the Second Coming; Take Revelation 6:8: “And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.”

Or as REM sings: It is the end of the world as we know. It is a concept that has been hanging over humanity for centuries–more so now with the advent of nuclear weapons. Where does A/I fit into this “brave new world.”

Whether we call it A/I or S/I our lives as humans are going to change. But that is what technolgy does it changes our lives. And for some it does mean the end of the world as they knew it. (Does anybody make buggy whips anymore?)

Take the shift from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age. It happened way back in ancient times but it was a radical shift. That shift, though, did not take place with the lift of a switch or juice being sucked off into a data center. It was a slow moving change.

The Bronze Age was known for an era the when the Egyptian New Kingdom flourished, the pyramids in Geza were built. It was moving away from stone tools and the mixing of copper and tin that created a durable metal for weapons and tools. It could have been the rare earth metals of the day. But this alloy lead to advances in agriculture. The problem was that copper and tin just weren’t laying around. Copper and tin had to be mined. The mining of ore lead to trade which lead to some political stability for many centuries. The concept of free trade ends wars may have been a concept in its infancy then.

But like with any technology, somebody came up with a comparative mouse trap–and made it better. In this case iron. Some poor old metallurgist who ran out of copper and tin was searching around for a substitute and found it in iron and carbon. He came up with a better mouse trap and the Bronze Age slowly turned into the Iron Age. For humans, it was a game changer.

Now here is my game changer with artificial intelligence, it, is here to stay. But I like the term artificial because it is not human, nor is it human intelligence. Sure it may think like a human and sound like a human with the proper inputs–but it ain’t human. Is it super? Cambridge Dictionary defines super as “extremely good, above average, or to a very high degree. And, as a prefix Vocabulary.Com+5 say the word derives “from Latin meaning “above, over, or beyond,” denoting something that exceeds normal limits or ranks higher (e.g., superhuman, supersonic)” However, putting the word super in there we are automatically elevating A/I to a level above human, like Super-human.

Right now we are looking at machines but what happens when an android or robot creates a legal case that works its way up to the Supreme Court claiming its rights have been violated. Or, it has a right to exist. It may sound strange but then Citizens United affirmed the belief that a corporation, Political Action Committees and Unions have free speech rights–and they are not even sentient beings but a conglomeration of money.

Life is Easy if You have the Updated Operating System

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Sometimes in life things change and we just don’t even notice. It is like when an old building that has been sitting tucked off the street for years gets pulled down; or that store on the corner that has been there forever goes out of business. And then one day you drive by and say to yourself “when did that happen.? When did they go out of business?” “Things” like that happen everyday. 

For instance, I have had a certain bank app on my iPhone for several years now. The reason I put the app on my phone was because I was moving to a state where that bank did not have any branches. So the app was a logical next step in the new electronically internet connected world we live in.

Now, I know I am aging myself because for the longest time in my life communication devices were connected to a landline to the home. The big upgrade was a cordless phone and answering machine. The mobile phone, soon to become a smart phone, changed all of that with voice mail. And I will admit, it is much easier now than back then. 

When it came to doing banking I would sit down on a Saturday morning with a cup of coffee and begin the task of writing out any bills that had arrived in the mail that week, put a stamp on an envelope and I was good to go. And with the advent of direct deposit I no longer had to stand in line, or wait in the drive through window at the bank on Friday to cash my check.  Things are starting to get easier.

Gone are the days when you would have to fill out a deposit slip indicating how much of your paycheck went into the checking account and how much cash you wanted back. The ATM soon became the go to place to get cash. You could go into just about any store and get  cash with a newly issued debit card. Today, the banking industry with its cash back bonuses has weened us away from carrying any cash at all—what’s in your wallet: no folding money. 

There were weeks when I would guard that last one or two dollars in my wallet as if it were the Dresden Green Diamond—waiting for Friday, Pay Day! Things seem to be getting easier.

But I have digressed from the banking app. I really did not use the app that much. Most of my banking is done remotely now. Now my bills either go directly to my bank to be paid or to an email account, no trip to the mailbox and no stamps needed. It was like when radio music went from AM to FM: “No static at all…”

Occasionally, however, there is the need to cash a check. That’s where the app comes in. It was awkward at first logging in, fumbling around with user names and passwords—which I never remember—and now getting an authentication code texted to me. Then there is taking a picture of the front and back of the check. I feel like an Olan Mills photographer cajoling a toddler to sit still. Here I am trying to get a check to smile at me while instructions pop on the screen demanding me to get closer, center the check or use a darker background. It was the modern version of fumbling in the bank with pen on a chain and trying to remember your account number for the deposit slip–if you did not have a slip that came with the checkbook. It keeps getting easier.

I never thought about the app beyond trying to log in until the other day when I went to cash a check. I went to the app and logged in, which I finally could do without having to fumble around for my user name and password. My phone remembered that for me. Life just keeps getting easier.

However, a slight glitched popped up. Before I could do my banking I needed to update the app. No problem I thought. I would just hit update, which then took me to another screen to get the new updated app. I hit “get” but I got nothing but a return to the previous screen that said update app. I thought I just did that. So I demonstrated one of two lesser desired qualities of human life, either stupidity, insanity or both, and I tried again to update. It sent me back to the app screen to get the app. I hit “get” again and was promptly sent back to update. I was putting myself into a human controlled flow loop, the proverbial dog chasing his tail. I thought things were supposed to be getting easier.

As in most cases it is me, as the user, who is lost in the tangle of internet webs that connect us to the cyber universe. It was now that I examined the screen closer. In the upper portion of the screen in small writing next to a triangle with an exclamation point was a small message.

I want to shuffle off a side street here for a moment because one, I have fat fingers and any typing I do on my iPhone ends up with numerous typos. Secondly, it takes more than my reading-glass cheaters set at 1.5 magnification to read something that small. Those little messages are treated like a Yield Sign in Dade County Florida, a strong suggestion to the other guy to look out for you because you are coming through. I just thought if they wanted me to stop or slow down the message would have been a bit bigger with a Stop Sign symbol: Please read before continuing.

The message said I needed IOS 17 on my Apple iPhone to download the new app. I went to Settings to see what my operating system was. I and fumbled around some more only to learn that my iPhone was operating on some version of IOS 16. Getting the app for my iPhone now  required an additional update—to my operating system. Further research on the internet reveled that my phone cannot be updated to IOS 17. I would need to buy a new phone to get the banking app to run.

I was dumbstruck. In my mind this would be like having to buy new shoes because you have a broken shoelace.  Why do I feel like I am being scammed? Maybe because I am; or we are. 

But, there is a happy ending to the story. I went to my iPad, which did have IOS 17. I uploaded the banking app and was able to cash the check–for $11.49.

However, I have to wonder is this like the old house tucked back on the street or the business that just closed. How many other of my seldom used apps are just sitting on the home screen waiting to be pulled down or sign placed in the front window that simply says “closing.”

Life is getting easier if you have the updated app.