Artificial Intelligence Is… What?

This is an essay of thought on what I’m dealing with in my creative space.

The Day After Yesterday

The day after yesterday is not today
But a memory of what has passed away
A glimpse of the past that lingers in the mind
A reminder of the joys and sorrows we left behind

The day after yesterday is not tomorrow
But a hope for what is yet to come
A vision of the future that inspires us to grow
A promise of the wonders we will discover

The day after yesterday is not now
But a bridge between then and later
A moment of reflection that teaches us how
To appreciate the present and make it better.

~Written by Bing AI, 8/21/23, in about 10 seconds

We better get used to AI (Artificial Intelligence). Though it’s been around for a while, its brilliance is popping up everywhere and showing us what “can be done when the future meets the present.” But this does give me a pause to consider a few questions.

1. Are we turning over our creative ability to AI and missing out on discovering a brilliant creative spark in our own minds?
2. What happens when something else does all our work for us?
3. Some say this is inevitable, but when was the last time you practiced with a typewriter, writing by long hand, doing math by hand and mind, drawing a picture, painting a scenery, or even researching an answer without using a computer?
4. Etc…

Writing longhand was replaced by typing, and cursive writing is no longer taught in many schools. Math once focused on learning the rules and proving your work with the steps it took to get to your answers. Then, we found it easier to calculate by an electronic device. (The first handheld electronic calculator was invented by Texas Instruments in 1967.)

AI is even used by millions (billions?) to help us write better. I use Grammarly to keep my words controlled, and the thought communicated in the proper tense of the sentence. It’s good at handling punctuation, misspelled words, and rearranging sentences to meet the flow of the popular language police. If allowed, it will change gender references to non-gender-specific language. Why? The thought police are trying to help us write without being gender specific because some don’t want to be identified by their DNA. (Whoops! Did I write that out loud? I hear the electronic sirens coming in the distance!)

I pause to consider
Writers of the old tomes in dusty libraries no longer visited
Who wrote with clarity from a mind
Unencumbered by distractions of keyboard and screen,
Not second-guessing the flow of a sentence,
Or the use and spelling of words,
In long-hand, with homemade quill and a bottle of ink.
They never worried what they wrote…
…was not what they meant to say…
Because it was all figured out in their mind
Before they put their quill to paper!
In front of them stares a blank piece of possibly homemade paper…
They had to get it right the first time.

My collection of modernly printed Bibles stands about five feet tall. Mostly collectors of dust, I’ve converted to my electronic space of portable tools that I’ve carried with me everywhere I’ve gone. Now, I crack open hundreds of books each month, but most are my electronic versions. They are generally cheaper, bought en masse, and stored in the cloud or on my portable device we call Mobile Phone. My bride first showed me the marvel of driving down a highway where cell coverage was spotty, opening her new “Kindle” device and buying a book, letting it download, and reading it while we were on a trip. When? Nearly 20 years ago, if my memory serves me correctly. That changed my attention! In about five minutes, she had something new to read!

Our automobiles are becoming computers with wheels. My bride’s truck has the ability to adapt to the flow of traffic, keep a safe distance, drive through the bends and gentle turns of a road, warn you of impending danger, and then take action! All from the benefit of computers and smart sensors.

Automation has been changing the world for centuries. Thus, we’ve been changing and expecting more out of our devices. Why? To make our life easier? To not have to think about something? Or, perhaps we are creating a better world with the time saved by automation?

What Is It?

AI is reality, and it’s theory. It’s solid in responding to simply our lives in some areas, but also questions how we do what we do, and programmatically, it can do something for us.

Can it do it faster? Better? Does it have to do it like a human, or is there a better way?

As a noun, AI is defined by Oxford as:

“…the theory and development of computer systems
able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence,
such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.“

There’s a good paper from IBM about AI (Link Here), and I appreciate the realities of their approach. Remember, they had a computer (Deep Blue) they were programming and training to play chess and do it better than any human could. If you dig deep enough, you will find that scientists were interested in the 1940’s using a computer and programmed algorithmic logic to play and win at Chess.

There are four types of AI at the time of my research.

4 main types of artificial intelligence

• Reactive machines. Reactive machines are AI systems that have no memory and are task specific, meaning that an input always delivers the same output. …
• Limited memory. The next type of AI in its evolution is limited memory. …
• Theory of mind. …
• Self-awareness. (Link for full article)

This is all my limit of explanation. Otherwise, I would have to spend days researching!

What’s Missing?

I guess my thought revolves around our progression as a species, what we’ve lost from things we no longer do, and what we are losing to the computer brains that will eventually rule and control the world.

Where is our creative genius? Producing electronic solutions, of course.

My years in IT (Information Technology used to be called Data Processing) always kept me on the leading edge (as opposed to the bleeding edge where new solutions can cause you to hurt yourself). I remember a school fair in Seabrook, Texas. It was about 1961. A schoolmate brought a personal battery-powered reel-to-reel tape recorder, and we all got to say something into the microphone and hear ourselves as it was replayed. Fascinating! Hooked! I wanted one! Expensive…

Maybe my options were limited by reality, but my scope and vision showed me a future. I entered the IT world, and it provided experience and finances for me to enjoy life. But it still leaves me missing out on the simple pleasures we once enjoyed without realizing their importance.

As I age out of the productive world, my attention is narrowing to what we’ve lost.

• I yearn to sit around a fire, with a Barlow or Case whittling a piece of wood, making kindling for the next fire.
• Or, finding a natural “Y” wood branch and fashioning a slingshot with an old rubber inner tube and the leather tongue of a failed shoe.
• Exploring the woods with my BB Gun and a few supplies that fit into my pockets. (Matches, candy, pocket knife, and a few coins if we found a store.)
• Or, hitting the road and exploring neighborhoods on my trusty 2-wheel pedal-powered bike. For hours, we rode everywhere we were allowed and some places that might be off-limits. Yes. We crossed Interstate 10, not just at the over/underpass.
• Or, playing in the ditch when the gully washers filled them with water – building dams, making twig boats, and swinging from the persimmon tree like Tarzan.
• Camping out in the backyard and staying up most of the night around a campfire.
• Riding in the back of Dad’s pickup truck with (Gasp!) no seatbelts, airbags, or other such protective gear.
• Grinding out my chores – washing baseboards, beating dusty rugs, cleaning the kitchen, raking and mowing… You get the picture. It wasn’t fun then, but a lot of character was fashioned with the action of “doing.”
• Pulling a wagon down a busy two-lane country road (near NASA, no less), picking up “coke” bottles, washing them, and trading them at the local convenience store for 2 cents per bottle. Candy money, or maybe some more BBs!
• Playing games sitting around the living room (where the only A/C unit was) – dad recovering from a hot day, mom working on her school work, and us finishing our homework. The TV was turned on only for a particular show, or we would sing or tell stories. Mom might turn on the hi-fi with some favored records. This is where we planned our days, scouting events, and talked about memories.
• Building model cars, planes, and ships! Tinker Toys. Lincoln Logs. Popsicle sticks.
• Making Ice Cream in the backyard, learning to be patient after it’s mixed, and letting it sit to firm up.
• I curled up with a good book and smelled the ink, paper, and binding, turning the pages one by one.
• Collecting coins…Yes, I still have them and still enjoy doing this today.

This was life without all the automation. We are missing out on so much of the present because we have no “doing” in our past. We created memories long before automation took over. How much have we lost?

So many words and melodies lament what we are missing from the simplicity of past life. Yet, back then, life was still complex and busy – on a different scale.

Example: I remember agonizing over homework, crying because there was too much, and missing out on family and friends visiting.

We learned that vacationing was enjoyable when we finally got to where we were going (always by car), but we also learned how to enjoy the journey and play games to pass the time. Read a book. Color. Count the cows, find the most license plates from other states, hold our breath in tunnels, touch our belly buttons when crossing train tracks (??), touch our noses when passing cemeteries… Do you get the picture? Games could be and were made from anything we wanted them to be. “I spy with my little eye…” “Mr. Jones went to Washington, and he took…’ Alphabetically, you identified the next item and had to recite, in order, all the other items others had chosen.

There is so much creation from our minds, fingers, words, and controlled actions.

Today? Stick a screen in front of everybody, play with automation or artificial intelligence, or scan the universe looking for a stupid video to watch. Creative minds will mush because everything they do is ordered by some programmer in a dark closet writing bewitching code.

Instead, we need to be creative in our “doing.”

Summation

While writing this post on my desktop computer with a speedy keyboard and attached mouse, my feet were doing their own thing – maybe wishing I could hike the woods as I was once accustomed to doing. Anyway, I tripped the button on my power supply, and my computer went quiet. Oh, no! Did I save everything? Did I create a problem with my newly updated software (earlier this morning)? What will I have to re-do? Undo? Think it through again.

Fortunately, I had turned on enough features so that my work was being saved on a regular basis, and I was only missing a sentence. And my browser asks if it wants to open up to where I was when I had a “power failure?” Sure. Everything opens up to where it was. All nine tabs of work points.

Salvation by automation!

AI may be beneficial, but in order to get our children to the point of living their future, let’s not forget to take them down the dusty roads of life and do things with their hands and minds. Mud castles, fishing, whittling, assembling, manufacturing, designing…

Maybe we will never sharpen a quill, mix a bottle of ink, or even make paper in manual mode. Perhaps BB guns will be outlawed, and knives (since 9/11) are no longer allowed everywhere. We will become weaponless and without the tools of our lives. Perhaps screens will dominate, and we will become couch potatoes doing only technological creative acts.

Let’s not forget the “doing” of things that require our physical and mental actions. Emotions are groomed by winning, losing, and taking chances.

Doing manual tasks will make all of us better in whatever our future. Let’s get back to “doing.”

Remember. A computer simulation or action still requires knowledge of the basic math of life. 1’s and 0’s – binary. On. Off. And you are in control!