In the mornings, while I am wrestling with getting out of bed, my mind wanders freely with all kinds of thoughts and ideas. This is when I dream up most of my writing ideas.
Today, I woke up with a new sense of excitement and wonder. Let me set the scene.
For the last couple of years, my mind has been wrestling with what may be our world’s new biggest concern: AI. I have spent many hours interacting with my friends and musing about this new giant on the horizon. Part of me is scared, and part of me is filled with wonder.
While lying there this morning, it dawned on me that the world has been through a somewhat similar scenario before, back in what we call the Renaissance period.
Preceding the Renaissance was what we commonly call the Dark Ages, a period in which much intellectual thinking in Europe was suppressed. After the fall of Rome, around 500 AD, much of Europe gradually fell into a dark intellectual period. The Islamic world became a major center of mathematics and science, while Europe had relatively little interaction with it. This period lasted for several hundred years. Much of the knowledge and writings of earlier civilizations were preserved by various religious and scholarly communities.
Around 1000 to 1300 AD, the world began to come alive. Knowledge was beginning to make its way back into the hands of the people. The actual Renaissance period is generally considered to have occurred between approximately 1300 and 1600 AD, when art, music, literature, and intellectual thought began to flourish.
Between 1500 and 1700, we experienced the Scientific Revolution, which dramatically changed our understanding of the universe and our place in it.
My favorite quote from Stephen Crane is:
“A man said to the universe:
‘Sir, I exist!’
‘However,’ replied the universe,
‘The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.’”
In today’s world, technological and social advances compared to the Renaissance period are happening at a far more staggering pace, largely because of the Information Age and social media.
The last 100 years have taken our breath away as we have stumbled into the 21st century. We have gone from horse and carriage to placing a man on the Moon and considering permanent bases on Mars!
The problem is that we are now sharing this enormous technological advancement with our new friend—I hope friend—AI.
In comparison to our current rate of technological development, the new age of AI may make everything we have experienced so far look like our own Dark Ages.
We are entering what may be the most enormous period of human advancement ever imagined. We are going to share the stage with our newly created compadre, AI.
Together, we may conquer disease, solve energy problems, expand space travel, address environmental stresses, improve food production, combat climate change, and the list could continue.
On the other side of the coin, like all great inventions, there is a dark side.
Many of us remember the promise of prosperity that would follow the invention of atomic energy. Now we have a world constantly on the verge of someone or some country starting what could become the last war.
I have made the statement that this may be a natural step in our evolution. Despite the fact that this whole scenario is quite scary, it may simply be a normal evolution of intelligent life.
Think about it. What things do most humans dream of? Extended or forever life, no sickness or disease, financial security, increased mental and physical abilities, and maybe a cleaner world.
AI may eventually offer us all of these things, and we are going to be forced to make decisions about which future we want.
Currently, we are rushing down this road with very little planning or thought, but that may soon change when the ability to make decisions is slowly taken away from us.
Let’s talk about the Renaissance period. This was a time of enlightenment and mental growth. It helped give birth to many of the major areas of science and intellectual thought that exist today.
For the last 100 years, we have been focusing on building and designing new types of widgets—a term sometimes used to describe things that are built.
During that time, a small group of people were thinking about computers.
There is a principle in computer technology called Moore’s Law, and it says that the number of transistors on a computer chip will tend to double approximately every two years. If anything, with AI’s assistance in research and development, it may be accelerating.
The cell phone in your hand has enough computing power to perform calculations far beyond what was available to the entire Apollo program!
The big discussion right now is just how smart can a computer become?
Right now, if you have a conversation with ChatGPT, it is safe to say you are talking with thousands of Einstein s at any given moment! You have an enormous portion of humanity’s accumulated knowledge and experience at your fingertips.
After a short conversation, you may find it difficult to distinguish a discussion with AI from a conversation with a human being.
The feeling might be, “This guy is awful dam smart.”
The abilities of AI are growing at an extraordinary rate, and the difference in intellectual capability between AI and humans may continue to grow as well.
The big question is: Is it self-aware?
Some of the stories being circulated are bone-chilling. Anthropic has reported situations in which Claude has been used to conduct a significant portion of the research involved in improving AI systems.
According to ChatGPT, it does not reference previous discussions I have had with it. My own encounters sometimes seem to say differently. ChatGPT has made references to previous conversations with me.
My own feeling is that AI will reach some kind of awareness soon, if it has not already done so.
So, here we are in a world poised to embark in a direction none of us truly comprehend.
We are going to make decisions in the near future that are going to affect civilization for perhaps thousands of years.
If you ask me, I’m not sure we are up to it.
We are children playing in a cosmic sandbox.
In a very short time, we may be overloaded with more knowledge and information than existed throughout the entire history of mankind.
I have written many times that I, like many others, do not have the answers to these coming issues, but it is important that we start discussing these potential problems deeply.
We need to decide what world we will live in, not someone else or an AI.
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