I appreciated JWR’s comments in his August 19th article on artificial intelligence. I’ve also had a lot of thoughts on AI recently, which I’d like to share.
JWR’s informative article addressed many of the societal changes and threats we’ll experience just as sure as the grass is green. At this point, my concerns are mostly on a personal level of how things will affect my grandchildren, and to a lesser extent, how they’ll affect my children and siblings.
WHAT IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE?
When people ask me to define what artificial intelligence is, I give them my country-bumpkin definition: Human intelligence is everything we’ve ever learned and stored in our brains since birth, and the ability to apply it to real-life situations, to be able to understand the situation and/or come to a logical workable solution.
Artificial intelligence, on the other hand, has nearly every bit of information ever learned in the history of mankind, harvested from the internet, stored in the largest memory banks imaginable, doesn’t forget things, and can test every conceivable solution to a problem and come to an understanding of all new knowledge as it’s encountered. And in many or most cases, AI can do it almost instantaneously.
Since our brains can only hold a finite amount of information, and since we forget much of that information as we get older, and since we can only process things at a certain pace, or only think of so many solutions to a problem, artificial intelligence can far surpass all human intelligence. What makes us human is all the other things computer chips and data ases can’t replicate: compassion, love, ethics, and morality, among other things.
In this article, when I say AI I’m not referring to robots that can vacuum our houses, walk the dog, or flip burgers at McDonalds, I’m referring to the tools available to all of us right now, programs such at ChatGPT and Gemini, and Internet “AI Search Assist” functions. These can do many intellectual things and replace skills for us. But in the process, they make us intellectually lazy and shortchange us in skills we would otherwise be developing. When we use these shortcuts instead of using the “manual” methods we’ve used all our lives, we’ll become dumbed down as a society, much as the invention of inexpensive calculators made many in my generation, and every generation since then, so dumbed down in math.
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT CONCERNS
As one who has always enjoyed learning, and one who has spent a lifetime trying to develop as many skills and talents as possible, AI concerns me when I wonder to what degree my grandchildren will follow in my footsteps. With instantaneous knowledge at their fingertips, what brain developments will those growing up in a world where AI has always existed be short-changed on? And to what degree will they be affected by the same inevitable dumbing down that will affect the majority of humans?
My single biggest concern with AI at this point of my understanding of it isn’t how soon the Terminator moves from fiction to reality, but in the ways AI is rapidly worsening the personal cognitive development of younger generations. This is especially concerning for me with my youngest grandchildren who are in their early single-digit years, and my soon-to-be great grandchildren, as well as the population in general. It’s also a concern from a prepping viewpoint. For many younger people, their dependence on AI will decrease the number and level of skills they’ll learn and develop. Problem-solving abilities will be diminished, making us less prepared for a TEOTWAWKI event which will require knowledge and innovation on a level never dreamed of.
The fewer areas of our brain that are well developed, the less intelligent we’ll be, the fewer skills and abilities we’ll have, and the more susceptible we’ll be to propaganda.
Thousands of articles have been written on how today’s teens are more depressed, feel less connected to family and friends, visit psychologists, and are worse off in many ways than all the generations before them, mostly due to social media. If the CDC numbers are correct, 28% of today’s teens receive some form of mental treatment each year. AI can only increase these sorts of problems in society.
One important phase of child development was discovered only recently. Who would have thought during the COVID pandemic when masks were required of students, that kids in kindergarten and the early grades would suffer setbacks in their cognitive development? It wasn’t realized until later that in learning speech and social interactions, it’s important to see the lip movements of other people. Who could have known beforehand how much seeing lip movement in others affects our ability to learn speech? Who would have guessed that learning to “read people” would be diminished due to wearing a mask all day long? Learning to read people is an important development since, among other things, we need to be able to understand their emotions and their reactions to us when we say different things. Things we can’t see if a mask is covering our faces.
In the same way, AI will have a definite effect on many of the important brain developments our children and grandchildren will need to be successful in life. Once AI becomes ingrained in our daily lives as much as laptops and cell phones have, will there be any turning back once the negative consequences of things are realized? I think it’s safe to say, not in a million years. With every aspect of AI, there’s no turning back.
THE DUMBING DOWN OF AMERICA
Another concern for the younger generations is how much their parents will allow AI to replace the development of their children’s intelligence and the dumbing down of Americans and people of all nationalities. With AI doing so much for us in the very near future, and feeling a need to be dependent on it in many ways, I think this dumbing down is inevitable.
I mentioned how calculators were the cause of the dumbing down of the general population’s math abilities. Forty years ago, when calculators were just a ten- or twelve-year-old, I was having a discussion with a junior high school math teacher who was from my father’s generation. He had been teaching for almost 25 years. He made a comment that was so mind-blowing I’ve never forgotten it. He said, “Why should kids learn math when they can buy a calculator for two dollars?” Wow. I couldn’t believe a math teacher of all people said that. If something as simple as a $2 calculator doing our math for us could dumb people down, and the internet taking that to a much higher level, how much more so will AI do the same? It was sad to see in a Scrabble game this week a friend who couldn’t multiply 14 x 3 in their head and had to use their calculator app.
Leaning math isn’t just about learning math, it has a large effect on the development of certain portions of our brains, which help us with troubleshooting, analytical abilities, and organization skills. Learning to write longhand has a brain-development aspect that has been greatly diminished now that the majority of our writing is being done via a phone or computer keyboard. I wonder how many kids learn to use a keyboard before they learn to write with pen and paper? While writing a check to pay for gas a while back, the gal behind the counter said she couldn’t write in cursive. I didn’t think too much about it until she said she couldn’t read it either!
MY FIRST PERSONAL EXPERIENCE WITH AI
One of my daughters came to visit this past June. Up until then, I hadn’t had any direct involvement with AI on a personal level.
My daughter is a very talented artist, a gene from her mother whose art we bartered to pay for the birth of our first child. My daughter expanded her mother’s talent in even more directions aside from sketches and watercolors. One aspect of her art is that she’s drawn and painted many pictures for children’s book illustrations. She has a definite recognizable style as many of the great masters from the past have. Earlier this year, she started sending me photos of a whole new style of her children’s book illustrations. Like all her work, they were very good. It wasn’t until her recent visit that I discovered they were different because they were created using an AI program.
My first thought was, wow, that’s amazing! My second thought was to start wondering what affect AI is going to have on art in general compared to the traditions of the past. To what degree will it stifle certain brain developments in today’s children who will be the artists of tomorrow if so much of the first art they’re creating is via AI programs? What giant leap forward/backward have we taken? I think it’s safe to say that AI will be doing much of the artwork of the future for both aesthetic as well as commercial uses. How many of those who formerly would have been creating art in traditional ways will be replaced as AI becomes the norm and traditional artists will become fewer? While we tend to put more importance on right-brained skills such as engineering, left-brained forms of intelligence such as creativity and art in its many forms are equally important.
My children and many others will tell me to get with the times, AI art is the future, but again, what effect will it have on the brain development of our children? Perhaps I’m too geezified and stuck in the past. Perhaps AI art will develop other parts of our brains. Time will tell.
(To be continued tomorrow, in Part 2.)
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