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ACCORDING TO LIZ - Artificial Intelligence has become a flashpoint.
Friends of Frump who helped pave his way to the White House, see oodles of profits; labor hears stranger-danger bells ringing.
Researchers are embracing a release from much of the drudgery common to most experiments, and scientists envision breakthroughs moving from distant horizons to the imminent future.
Kids play with chatbot friends instead of flesh-and-blood buddies. Parents shiver from stories of consequences. Think tanks want the pace of the marketing to slow so adequate guardrails can be erected and effectively implemented.
The president wants to remove all existing state regulations and let the good times roll for his tech-bro supporters.
Until the world as we know it blows up or takes a hard left into a world we can no longer recognize.
So, what to do?
Why not ask A.I. itself? Although with a slew of competing bots, all programmed and trained by people with different biases, we may need a United Nations of Bots to corral the competing disinformation and misinformation away and winkle out filaments of truth.
Ah, but that might entail the granting of rights to A.I. entities as some have advocated.
Taking this to the extreme, would it mean an Alexa.201 that burns down a house killing its occupants, could or could not be arrested and charged with murder? Just it or all artificially-aware Alexas? Or every A.I.-enabled piece of tech?
Would an A.I. lawyer defending the murderous Alexa.201 as defective to an A.I. jury save the rest?
Who then is to blame? The designer? The programmers? The manufacturer? Those working on the assembly line?
Is one person at fault? Or all of humanity?
Because the dog chewed the charger, should all canines be euthanized?
A more positive perspective was posted on LinkedIn by Jacquie Court of Toronto:
Prompt to a Chatbot:
“As the world struggles with climate change and clean water, how do we justify scaling AI without equal innovation in reducing its water footprint and what solutions should we be accelerating now?”
Chatbot's Response:
“AI has a water problem. That part is no longer up for debate. What gets far less attention is this the issue is not the existence of AI. It is how and where it is being deployed.
“Most of AI’s water use comes from cooling data centres, not from the technology itself. Traditional cooling systems rely heavily on water, often in regions already facing water stress. That is an infrastructure choice, not a technical inevitability.
“There are practical ways to reduce the impact, and many already exist:
– Closed loop liquid and immersion cooling systems can dramatically cut water use.
– Building data centres in cooler climates allows air cooling to replace water intensive systems.
– Smaller, more efficient models reduce the need for constant retraining and massive compute loads.
– Waste heat from data centres can be reused to heat buildings and support local energy systems.
– Non potable and recycled water can replace drinking water where cooling is still required.
“This is not about slowing innovation. It is about modernizing the systems that support it.
“The climate conversation has focused heavily on carbon. It now needs to widen to include water. Without transparency, smarter siting decisions, and incentives for efficiency, AI risks quietly deepening a crisis the world is already struggling to manage.
“AI can be part of the solution. But only if it is designed, deployed, and governed with water in mind.”
Not bad, huh?
But the danger is that this is only one Chatbot’s response to one very intelligently posed question.
The guardrails that organizations and states want erected are already falling further and further behind the collective marketing powers of the Silicon Valley technocrats jonesing to fiscally capitalize on their investments.
And now the Tantrum-prone Two-year-old in the White House has issued an edict to neutralize all barriers to cancerous growth of the worst elements of A.I. – chatbot friends whispering sweet nothings in our children’s ears, unsupervised execution of political opponents, interconnecting with the world-wide-web to outdo Terminator 2’s Skynet…
But if mankind could tame this technology to do good for all mankind, what a great gift it would be for us all.
In addition to releasing humans from repetitive drudgery to spend their days doing good, we could set it to analyze priorities so we address problem-solving more effectively.
It can run multiple scenarios simultaneously laying out the positives and negatives for living, breathing, feeling teams to ethically assess the better and best solutions.
It could help integrate the fiscally feasible with the emotionally acceptable. It could assist in finding respectful approaches to address the needs and desires of minorities in a pluralistic democracy. It could find ways to weave together the best of social justice to coexist with the cutting edge of capitalism.
An example might be to, in conjunction with local indigenous peoples, transition tar sands exploitation in Alberta, Utah, Venezuela, and Russia to wind energy and other green technologies, utilizing the natural weather patterns of those regions to provide an alternative to carbon fuels, generate renewable clean energy, reduce global warming, halt water pollution, create well-paying long-term employment, and replace pipelines with an electric infrastructure that is both planet-friendly and profitable.
Yes, such undertakings post a plethora of challenges… but isn’t that what A.I. should be helping humans with?
Not making mankind second-class citizens on their own planet.
But by taking on and expediting human-directed research to resolve the world’s ills so mankind can, assisted by a well-regulated technology, live at last in peace and prosperity.
(Liz Amsden is a former Angeleno now living in Vermont and a regular CityWatch contributor. She writes on issues she’s passionate about, including social justice, government accountability, and community empowerment. Liz brings a sharp, activist voice to her commentary and continues to engage with Los Angeles civic affairs from afar. She can be reached at [email protected].)
