I’ve been toying with handing all my life over to the dark-side; just letting AI take over every aspect, from what time I get up, how strong my coffee is, what shoes to wear … Help me AI, teach me your ways.
Can all of my tasks be replaced with AI? Will people know it’s me behind a letter or a thought or an action, or will AI clone all that I once was?
Did I secretly ask AI to write this article?
It’s probably a good time to point out here that I’m referring to AI, the acronym for Artificial Intelligence. While just about everyone reading this may know that … I had a weird thought that depending on the font chosen for this write-up, it could look like AL not AI.
And while there are a few ALs in my life who can help me to form decisions about a nice beer to try, a new TV show to watch or a new pair of sneakers to buy, I don’t think Allan, Allison or Ali are ready to take over all of my functions like a Body Snatcher.
But I digress … My apologies, I got distracted … which is a human trait we don’t see with Artificial Intelligence. Those who know me — or who have tried to follow some of my “abstract” writing moments or thought processes as I watch someone eating a donut — may suspect I have a vivid imagination… or that there is only one drunk hamster running on a four-hamster wheel spinning between my ears. Both synopses would be accurate.
And while artificial intelligence may well be able to replicate something similar to my thought process after it data-scrapes all references to the term “vivid imagination” and “why three-legged Dalmatian and Dachshund-cross dogs make terrible pizza-makers” from every turn of the Information Highway, it won’t do it justice.
I’m laughing inside my head right now as I type and simultaneously think not about spotted dogs with sausage bodies covered in pizza dough, but about shadows being projected onto the road and oncoming traffic from goldfish swimming inside a set of LED car headlights. Would an article written by a machine tell you that?
No, AI won’t replace us. There are too many uniquely human qualities that can never be replicated. And we all know that in the end, despite its foibles, humanity is too intelligent to allow artificial intelligence to take over. I think scientist and author Isaac Asimov underlined that assurance in his Three Laws of Robotics … or it might have been Sarah Connor in The Terminator.