Saw a brief show on AI. As I understand it, it's sort of artificial learning, accumulating knowledge and data, and I guess using that to recognize patterns, predict outcomes, even offer solutions.
Up til now we've had "repositories" for knowledge -- scrolls and books and databases. And we've developed tools to process crude knowledge (like the abacus, calculator, Excel spreadsheets, and spell check).
Advantage of AI is that it can internalize this data, recognize patterns, and retain those findings -- ie "learning."
The interesting thing is, humans have a short shelf-life -- they die and every new human has to learn everything all over again from scratch. So right off the bat AI has a huge advantage -- it retains its knowledge and presumably grows its capability forever.
I guess this is what gives rise to the fear of "machines taking over" -- they'll keep learning and growing while each generation of humans has to play catch up.
What I think of is, can AI take over all mental labor? Just as robots do manufacturing faster and better than humans, could AI be used to do all the "thinking" jobs like law, accounting, finance, medicine, even public policy? Creative jobs, music, entertainment?
Then we face the displacement paradox. "Labor saving technology" sounds great but so far it hasn't worked. We've spent 10,000 years developing labor saving methods and increasing yields, but today in France they're having to raise the retirement age so people work longer.
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