The AI Paradox: Understanding the Hype and Reality

Something to note about technologies that are all the rage is that they're not new technologies. AI has been around since after the Second World War. It was nowhere near as impressive as today, but it was AI. And now it's all the rage because somehow the masses got crazy about it, but also because it's reached an impressive point. However, as with any technology that becomes all the rage, many things that are not AI are attributed to AI.

For example, before the AI craze, you'd hear, "It was photoshopped!" Now you don't hear that anymore. Any manipulation of an image is considered AI, as if these manipulations were impossible without AI. So where AI meets non-AI is confused and misunderstood. Not all drones are AI. Unmanned drones were around before the AI rage. As a kid, I played video games that used AI technology, where the enemy characters "thought" for themselves. If I shot at them from behind a particular tree and then got killed, the enemy would look behind that tree on my next respawn. That was quite impressive. But when I told my friends about this—"Hey guys, this AI stuff is cool"—there was zero interest because it wasn't all the rage as it is now.

So much is jumping on this bandwagon of AI that is not AI and will never be AI. A lot of the excitement about AI is at a very basic level—from "Look how AI changed that meme" to "Look how AI created that beautiful image." All things that could be done without AI—more effort, yes, but still possible. What could not be done without AI is having a drone fly 900 km, carrying 400 kg, without a pilot onboard or on the ground and without instruction from a human. I'm using an extreme example, as we're not there yet.

Teslas, self-driving Teslas—that's AI. Robot dogs attacking their handlers—that's AI; AI gone wrong, but AI nonetheless. When we hear about the dangers of AI, the response is, "Oh no, AI will pretend it's my kids and ask for help?" Again, these are very basic concepts. Prank calls and scams have been around long before AI. So, this has nothing to do with AI as much as it has to do with human fears and our special bond with fearing new things.

When the radio was created, people were afraid. When novels were created, people were afraid. I even read an article from back then cautioning men not to let their wives read novels, for their households would fall apart. As a kid, computer games were the scary, evil terror. We'd all get addicted and fail in school. As if kids didn't fail in school before computer games. Until recently, it's been porn, but porn is a bit different because it does sell the fantasy of sex, and there is a real problem with addiction for many age groups. Still, the world did not fall apart because of porn consumption.

Today, the great fear is AI. True AI is different because it's much more potent than any previous fears. It can be used to build and destroy. It can be used to fight wars, transfer funds, accept funds, heal people, make people sick, educate people, and make people dumb. It can do both sides of the coin effectively and quickly. If only the Nazis had AI like we do today, but then again, the Russians have it, and they're not using it effectively. They're using Iranian Shahed kamikaze/suicide drones, and they're not self-flying.

Israel effectively used drones recently, but again, these are not self-flying. They all have a human counterpart. Maybe you remember the movie Congo, where they find those men-killing gorillas in that temple, and at night, they set up this wild perimeter of automatic machine guns that shoot anything that comes near it. That's old technology—it's motion sensors. AI is when those machine guns can say, "Human, don't engage; gorilla, engage." Again, this is advanced AI. Very advanced AI will be "Good gorilla, bad gorilla, questionable gorilla; human from our camp, human from the other camp; human not a threat, human a threat," etc. The more details, the more room for mistakes.

It's noteworthy that technologies reflect the people who make them. For example, coloured TV didn't pick up black people correctly when it first came out. The colour base they were using was that of white people because mostly white people worked in TV. While you can raise the flag of racism if you like, it had to do with the people around the technology, just as Teslas do well with American roads but may struggle with European roads. Apple released the new iPhone with an AI aspect that was blocked in the EU. Again, it may work perfectly in the EU, but the AI part was still blocked for one reason or another.

When you understand that when you look up in the sky and see a drone, that drone is looking at you, determining who and what you are and how it should respond to you. It has options at its disposal, then you will understand why AI is different and why it needs to be taken seriously.