I’m amazed at our Alexa. She’s grown from playing Radio 2 on
demand to reminding Mothermouse to water the plants eleven o’clock Thursday.
I’m assuming with more AI she’ll be able to suggest of her own volition that I
need a shower urgently. But I’ve noticed already that the algorithms within
Facebook and Google et al do something subtly different, and that subtle
difference follows through to our reactions, our ongoing sensibilities. Like
Windows 10. I’ve been using computers professionally for 40 years now for
accounts, graphics, engineering, music, writing extensively from an ancient
Apple and Win86 onward. Then last week I resurrected Bethmouse’s laptop from the
dead, now all working and with Windows 10. I was lost! I couldn’t do a thing
with it. It seems to be just an internet viewer. OK it’s not but it guides the
user to be one. Likewise AI guides us in particular ways. AI and machine learning do something we’ve
called intelligent but is it? Is it in fact AE, Artificial Emotion? I see
emotions as like algorithms where some irresolvable situation causes me to
vaguely churn through the same scenario in the hope of some resolution. Either
that or hop on an, often prescribed, answer and similarly churn to defend it to
the death. Experience has taught me both are a waste of time and the real
answer is to ‘do something about it!’ Since the advent of AI and social media
people seems to have become more polarised. Everyone has a point of view yet
few are actually thinking, and if I’m right thinking is what we normally call
intelligence. So from now on I will consider the bright new future of
Artificial Intelligence as likely to become the terminal neurosis of human kind.
