From the White-PillBox: Part 57
Artificial Intelligence - an unexpected White Pill.
Imagine having a window into prehistoric times. Imagine observing the very moment the wheel was invented, and appreciating just what this invention means to the course of humanity’s future.
Today’s version of the wheel has been invented, and you are there to witness it. It is artificial intelligence (AI) 1.
To understand why AI will be this impactful to human progress, and why it is a White Pill, requires some background discussion…
What is it?
There is no shortage of complicated explanations of how AI works. This essay is not concerned with AI’s technical foundations. Rather it addresses this question more fundamentally.
AI is a tool
In this way it is like the wheel, a hammer, a spoon, an ox, a shovel, a car, a jet, etc. And what distinguishes a tool is simple.
A tool is something other than a human body, that extends our capabilities beyond what the body can do.
Your arms and hands are not tools; they are part of your body. How much dirt you can dig, and how fast, are limited by the strength of your arms and hands.
A shovel is a tool. It helps you do a better job of digging than you can do with only your body.
All tools satisfy the requirement of extending our abilities. If they fail to help us do things better, faster, etc., they are useless as tools.
Tools leverage our resources. With them, we are able to do more tasks; make more useful things; enjoy more things; save more precious time.
What the AI tool does
AI helps us process information better and faster. Of course computers have been doing this for over half a century. But AI has reached a new level of sophistication. It is very good at properly interpreting what we ask; it is able to efficiently and quickly scour the vast information available on computers across the world; it compiles the information into responses that can be remarkably sensible and useful.
Why impactful?
To understand the impact AI will have, we have to take another step back, to ponder the importance of human knowledge.
Man’s turning point: knowledge
Our primitive ancestors’ original condition was as animals in nature. They survived by foraging and hunting for food; they had to find environments that avoided extreme cold and heat; they had to deal with predators.
The discovery and use of tools were one reason man was able to improve his condition beyond that of an animal. Tools helped lift man out of his brutish existence 2.
Tools became more sophisticated with time. In the present day, man’s tools have made his existence comfortable beyond anything previously imaginable.
The source of man’s tools
But tools did not drop out of the sky. Every tool ever devised emerged because of one thing: a human mind thought of it.
A mind had to recognize aspects of the world. A mind had to think about it. A mind had to formulate a new idea. That idea could then be implemented into a real and useful thing…a tool 3 .
Thus, tools have two attributes: 1) physical components (supplied by nature); and 2) ideas that put those components together (supplied by thinking human minds).
But the mind is the key component, because the physical components alone cannot magically assemble themselves into tools. A new idea must trigger the process.
But there’s a limitation at work
There is a natural constraint to how many new ideas can be produced. Only people can do it, and there are only so many people in existence. It’s a ceiling on new ideas: the number of people.
Enter AI: a new source of new ideas
AI creates a brand new condition regarding ideas. It is no longer humans alone that can produce new ideas. We now have a tool that can do it. For the first time in our species’ history, our ability to devise new ideas is enhanced.
The speed of our progress - of our improving quality of life - is no longer constrained by the strictly limited number of people thinking up ideas. We can now ask our AI tools to do it, too…as much and as often as we care to.
And remember: while physical resources are limited (only one person can use them at a given time), ideas are replicated, almost infinitely, at no cost.
Enter the scare tactics
This is the point where many start to fear AI.
Scary predictions about technology are far more interesting than reality. This largely arises from science fiction stories, wherein computers turn against mankind and seek humanity’s destruction. It is easy to observe the growing abilities of AI and project a similar outcome.
Technology is actually far more boring than that.
But even if we understand that AI systems do not actually think, and lack genuine intelligence, we worry that it can be used (especially by government) to threaten or harm us.
Can AI be used for evil? Absolutely yes…just as any tool can. You can use a pencil to write out a new mathematical theory; you can also use it to blind someone. Computer technology highly streamlines our lives; but the State uses it monitor our finances and personal lives. Nuclear technology can be an amazing source of energy; but governments have used it as an unthinkably horrific weapon, and continue to use it to keep the world in terror.
Likewise for AI: it has the potential to be used for great evil.
But it also has the potential to address even that problem. The beauty of this tool is that it can be used to devise ways to defend against such threats.
Which brings us to the White Pill
The State itself does not think up ideas
One of the many reasons that the State is a weak adversary is because it is not itself a thinking entity. Obviously individuals in the State are capable of thinking; but the State as a whole - the composite thing we call government - cannot think. Thus, it cannot recognize its own vulnerabilities; it cannot thereby defend itself strategically by means of thought…by ideas.
And AI does help us devise new ideas
AI is in its infancy as an idea-producing tool 4. If today it is coming up with dozens or hundreds of new ideas that lead to useful real-world improvements, tomorrow it will be producing thousands, perhaps millions.
Many of AI’s new ideas will be helpful to people. True, some will happen to help the State. But this will be a small percentage. And, as indicated, AI can be used to devise ideas to help defend against the State.
The coming improvements made possible by AI will accelerate the growth in positive choices available to us as we live our lives. In this regard, AI is poised to play a key role on the path to a stateless society:
Specifically, the role of crowding out the State from human affairs.
Conclusion
New ideas and tools have transformed life more in the last 50 years than ever before. An important outcome of this is the increasing irrelevancy of the State. With all its propaganda, it is woefully unable to compete with areas of life outside of government (technology, science, productivity, entertainment, etc.) in meeting human needs.
AI is fast becoming the wheel that accelerates the irrelevancy of the State.
It should be emphasized that AI, in all its current forms, does not produce thinking machines. AI does not replicate how the human brain works. Yes, it quickly searches and processes information. But AI is not self-aware. It is incapable of exercising free will. In this respect AI’s use of the word “intelligence” is somewhat misleading. AI can simulate the appearance of intelligence, without actually being so.
To be clear, tools helped lift man out of the state of nature; but they were not the only factor. For example, at some point the norm of consent emerged. The critically important contrast between the state of nature, and consent, is explored more thoroughly here.
It is true that we see tools in the animal kingdom. These serve animals in the same way as humans: they enable them to accomplish something that cannot be done with their bodies alone. But the vast majority of animals’ tools result from an evolutionary process. The species “discovers” useful ways to employ natural resources. Insofar as these tools benefit the survival of the particular species, evolutionary processes favor the behaviors that use the tools. The tool-making can become instinctual for the species thanks to evolutionary pressures.
Man’s tool-making is no longer instinctual. Man chooses to design and build tools.
A simple example: cake recipes exist for perhaps thousands of flavors and styles. A clever use of AI might uncover flavors, ingredients, or styles that “think outside the box” in ways not yet imagined by anyone. This could even include substitutes for certain ingredients that are more healthy or less expensive than traditional ones.
A related example would use this same principle in chemical, manufacturing or materials processes. AI can be asked to find alternatives to existing ingredients or processes.
It takes little imagination to realize this can trigger entirely new industries over the course of time.