AI and the Human Heart

Timothy Birdnow

Ed Huneke, an old family friend, asked me about my thoughts on CHAT GPT and other emerging technology. Ed said:

You need to share your thoughts more specifically on AI & chat GPT. I know it's a nascent tool, but your prognosis would be interesting.

Here is my reply: I've been having discussions on Ai and Chat GPT on other threads. I'm a bit reluctant to get into it as there are others far more familiar with the technology than am I. But my thoughts on the matter are that this is a very dangerous technology, not because I fear it taking over (as many do) but because I fear PEOPLE using it as a tool to oppress others.

How can you run a society, especially a democratic society, if a computer can make a deep fake of anyone? You could never know if the speech you saw was real or was created by a computer! Imagine a hidden camera-type sting on a major figure that shows him to be in bed with, say, the Russians. How do you know it is legitimate? They'll be able to do that to, say, Donald Trump in a couple of years; make a whole phone conversation with Trump on the line telling Putin where to send his money and it would all be AI. You won't be able to have free and fair elections with such technology (and with the current bare-knuckle politics being waged these days.) Blackmail will become an everyday affair.Women will turn on their computers and see themselves starring in pornography. Men will see videos of themselves bothering little girls. People will be ruined by accusations of criminal behavior with a paper trail solidly proving they did it. How do you stop that Ed?

This has the potential of being a civilization-en

I'm not worried about it becoming HAL9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey or the like, although I suppose it's possible. (Frankly I think computer science is a bell-curve and we may be reaching the peak of it.) I don't fear a Skynet or whatnot.

Roger Penrose, the famous physicist, moved into neurobiology later in his career. He said that the brain does not work according to any known laws of physics - neither classical nor quantum - and that we need a whole new theory of physics of the brain. I do know that, while computers are much faster than neural impulses (which in itself may be a detriment to them; we don't know) they do not possess the overall complexity of the brain. There are 89 to 100 billion neurons in the human brain, and that vastly outstrips the number of electronic pathways in computers. Of these neurons each can have as many as 100,000 synaptic connections! Do the math. And the brain often does double, triple duty; neural pathways can and do perform more than one function. There is vast redundancy. If you take out half a person's brain the brain will alter to keep functioning, and often there isn't even much change in the person. The brain is the most complex system in existence. I don't think a man-made machine will ever be it's equal.

But that doesn't mean a machine can't be a rival of sorts - particularly as it will be programmed by flawed, fallible human beings.

BTW HAL went nuts in 2001 because he was given contradictory instructions (I read the book). He was programmed to be open and honest at all times, then was given new instructions to lie to the crew. He had only one way out; to kill the crew and finish the mission alone. This he did (except he failed to get Dave Bowman).

At any rate the real danger of these machines, in my opinion, is the corrupt human heart that is doing the programming.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 08:16 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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