AI shapes new worlds, abandons the real one
By Daniel O. Jamison
The nation’s bridges, roads, sewer and water lines, electrical grid and other infrastructure are dilapidated, but the nation’s manufacturing genius is focused evermore on questionable convenience devices.
At Google’s 10th annual developers’ conference in May, CEO Sundar Pichai reportedly declared that today is “the moment of mobile.” He was not talking about physical or even mental exercise.
Pichai also reportedly declared that today people “live on their phone.” He was quoted as stating Google wants “to help you get things done in your real world.” Mind you, not the real world, “your real world.” And what are these things? Google’s messaging app Allo will use language recognition and artificial intelligence (AI) to understand your speech, habits and preferences. The engineering director reportedly states Allo will use “machine learning to suggest replies on the fly, anticipating what you might say.”
Indeed, why should anyone have to think when they can have AI do that for them?
Are personal apps for weekend warriors soon to have artificial virtual replacements who remove that messy business of physical exercise?
Perhaps soon not only the bloated rich can have someone ridiculously pursue Pokemon for them or swing their golf club while they watch sipping beers in their golf cart.
Google also announced a personal assistant that will allow one to ask the phone for movie times and then will buy tickets. The app will also retrieve movie reviews and show a trailer.
“Google Home” will take voice commands to stream music and control lights. “Knock knock” will see who is calling and from where. You won’t even need to get out of your chair to move around your house! A self-driving car will dodge potholes to take you to the movie. What more could anyone want?
As people sink into their personal “real worlds” created by a manufacturer’s AI, education, information and privacy fall more and more into the hands of those who can manipulate them to their advantage and to the disadvantage of personal liberty. People become too dulled to resist the manipulation or even know it is happening.
As a self-reliant citizenry, reasonably educated in the nation’s founding principles, fades, so do the nation’s great concepts of persevering individual liberty in a representative democracy.
Sacramento Bee political columnist Dan Walters has lamented the threat to liberty from political figures who profess respect for civil rights: “Smoke a cigarette, own a gun, cut a tree, pan for gold, question the ‘inconvenient truth’ of human-created global warming, utter an impolite joke or even drive a gasoline powered car and you may run afoul of an ever-tightening web of laws and rules that punish your heresy….”
AI manipulated with repeated “Big Lie” suggestions is potentially more insidious.
So for many, the focus of the genius of American manufacturing on purported “convenience” devices mostly encourages sloth, ignorance, isolation and national weakness and ultimately plays into the hands of the manipulators.
That national weakness is perhaps best expressed in the failure of the American genius to address the gargantuan chore of rebuilding and repairing the nation’s infrastructure.
But, Google cries, corporations have an obligation to make a profit for shareholders! Yes, but we all also have an obligation to support the nation.
Google and others might direct their lobbying efforts to legislators to provide the financial incentives to make solving infrastructure problems consistent with shareholder expectations.
“Living on their phones” and ensconced in their “real world,” our legislators hopefully will still be able to attend to basics, but can we count on it?
When is the re-release of Wall-E playing?