AI needs fewer Iron Men and more Smart Hulks

When I got into machine learning it was all about making the world a better place. I worked for Microsoft and had access to projects and the smart people behind them that all were for the benefit of humans.

• Batch analysis of MRI scan data to allow doctors to detect cancer growths faster.
• Analysis of satellite imagery to predict storms and floods and limit their impact.
• Analysis of soil and satellite imagery to predict the outcome of crops.
• Smart glasses for the visually impaired, that read out menus for them.
• Bionic legs for a dancer who lost one in an accident and got it trained on hours of her performances.
• Roger Ebert getting his iPad to talk in his voice.
• Bracelets to counter-act Parkinson tremors so that people could write again.
• Contact lenses that detected early stages of diabetes.

We used visual analysis, natural language detection and reinforcement learning to build technology that made life better and even saved lives.

The Covid Truth Bomb

Then COVID hit and with it two things happened. First of all, we had to admit that technology companies aren’t as good as they said they were in delivering fast, secure and sensible tools. And the all out war on intelligence, science and decency started.

That COVID had such an impact was shocking. I thought we were further along in dealing with and battling diseases. But instead of a swift period of protection, analysis and countering the virus we failed on many levels. Even the most simple ones like creating a tracking app that shows who’s infected and who’s been vaccinated.

Science bad, consumption good

In this period we also saw a concerted effort to discredit science and governments by movements who want to get power over people. Social media got weaponised to claim there is no pandemic and that vaccines are dangerous and here to control folk. The depth of ridiculousness allowed the re-emergence of dozens of hitherto debunked conspiracy theories and by repetition their osmosis into daily discussion and even political discourse.

Meanwhile technology advanced in leaps and bounds and artificial intelligence – as we call it now without hesitation – is everywhere. The power of computation and the impressive results of almost weekly new models is staggering. But instead of taking these to tackle the world’s problems, and create solutions for humans as shown in the beginning of this post, we have people in charge that have no interest in other people, but instead want to make their mark on history and find a way to reach immortality. They make no qualms about considering empathy a weakness, innovation for the common good being akin to socialism and they are revered as visionaries and great leaders for that. It’s staggering to see it happen. We make sociopaths and egotists not only the norm, but the right way to become successful.

Here are things that are an immediate concern – some of them even a mortal danger – that we should be solving with AI and state-of-the art computers:

• Diseases. Cancer is still the big bastard elephant in the room. COVID isn’t over and the way we dealt with it needs a lot of analysis. Medication should be affordable to everybody and vaccines should be a standard to prevent outbreaks and pandemics.
• Environmental impact. We’re burning fossil fuel that is both bad for the environment and limited. A few groups of people control it and blackmail the rest of the world economically. We’re destroying the only planet humans can live on in our galaxy for short-term income and to protect a power structure that has been around since the first cars.
• Energy. We do need an arc reactor or any way to create and store energy. Currently wind farms stay still as there aren’t enough places to store the energy they produce. At the same time AI data centres and our computational energy needs are going through the roof.
• Education. For a short period AI was heralded as a way to make everyone smarter and help us make better decisions. Free us of mundane and time consuming tasks and make us more efficient to pursue our passions. Make hard-to-understand concepts easy for everyone and help us find our potential. Democratise software development and make us independent of consumption by printing products on demand.

Instead, we live in a world of hype, headlines and self-proclaimed tech visionaries complete with a cult following. There’s an all-out social media and propaganda attack on the things listed here:

• A superpower like the United States has an outspoken anti-vaccination health secretary, who lobbied against and stopped lots of programs and then reinstated them after breakouts of diseases we considered history. He also promised at conspiracy theorist conventions to officially investigate chemtrails, something a far right party politician in Germany also demanded to be part of school education.
• People in power and politicians claim that there is no environmental issue and the fires, floods and failing crops have always been a thing, no matter how hot the average year gets. Instead of working towards a goal to lower the average earth temperature we keep throwing blame at each other and question the importance of polluting less. Some politicians and tech leaders even openly question the greenhouse effect.
• Many public figures and tech leaders promote going back to nuclear energy as a way to create enough energy for our AI needs – some even in space. Neither is nuclear energy efficient enough nor can plants be built fast enough to meet the needs. And then there’s the question what to do with the waste products, a question unanswered since the 50s.
• AI should make us more educated, as it gives us more free time to reflect and review. Instead of doing that though, every AI platform pushes us into more and more consumption. Instead of becoming researchers and reviewers we are being pushed into consumers of magic eight balls that give us one answer and ask us to repeat it and tell people about it regardless of its validity. Learning basic skills is considered a waste of time when a commercial product backed by a tech visionary could teach us whatever we need on demand. Reading grade and school grades are tanking all over the place and basic problem solving skills atrophy.

One could argue that the way we measure them is outdated and that school curriculums are outdated, but the fact is that sooner or later we will need these basic skills. That we teach them in a boring manner and ask students to repeat things learned by heart without understanding them to get a good grade is another problem. AI repeats that mistake. Instead of telling us the why it tells us the how. The problem solution is not the goal, reaching the verifiable result as fast as possible is.

Space optimism good, cold war reenactment badd

I am a huge fan of space and the science that comes with exploring it. I have a high school astrophysics degree, a hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy themed leg tattoo and know a lot more about Star Trek than sane people should. I am also a huge fan of the 50s space age optimism and thrive to reach for the stars. I am not a big fan of a repeat of the 60s space race when superpowers used scientific endeavour to promote the cold war and as a slightly veiled attempt to build more powerful weapons. And this is happening right now.

Heralded tech visionaries promote going to space as a necessity instead of focusing on fixing our home planet. That is not about us, that is about them dealing with their own mortality and wanting to make a mark before they die (check their ages for a clue). They also use it as a distraction to not having to deal with real matters that everyone would benefit from if we fixed them. Make no mistake, replacing landlines and fiberoptic cables with satellite connectivity run by a few companies is not about getting people online. It is about making them dependent on those few providers and controllable.

I don’t care for bipedal robots that run faster than humans. I don’t see robot dogs that can run over ragged terrain as something worth promoting. I see them as weapons and means of controlling people. We’ve been promised smart bombs and drones for years that could strike surgically and only hit the right people. Instead we now see cheap, disposable kamikaze drones hitting civilians in the Ukraine conflict every day.

We had a chance to use technology for good and to make our lives better and the world more livable. We gave this up for a world of a few loud and socially crippled people selling us a world of technological wonders but in reality only want us to be dependent on them. Let’s rebel against that. Let’s go back to using our AI and technology skills to make things that humans and our world benefits from. No, we will not leave this planet that we messed up behind any time soon. Some super rich people might, but I for one see nobody talking about a public transport system to safety yet, do you?