Artificial intelligence?

 There is a lot of idle chatter and speculation about the supposed AI and it's uses in Ham radio on the Ham Radio forums, just now. I've become involved in one such discussion this week on QRZ.

I am reminded of Donald Fagens "IGY"...


The money lines from the tune, in this context, are these:

"Just machines will make big decisions
Programmed by fellas with compassion and vision.

We'll be clean when their work is done... We'll be eternally free and eternally Young."

That was the vision back in 1958, the so-called " international geophysical year".


Overly optimistic, certainly. But there is always a certain reality detachment attached to such optimism, if for no other reason than we don't fully understand what the reality ahead of us IS. but consider the context of the time: After the horrors and sacrifices of WWII, there hardly seemed to be anything we couldn't accomplish.  

And there's a subtle point nestled in those lyrics, written in 1981, with the added understanding that hindsight brings:  For the machine to be effective toward the stated goal, it needs to know know what's going on, what's good, what's bad, what's fact, what's fiction, etc, someone has to teach the machine.

Indeed, I hold that AI simply doesn't exist... not as such; That AI only knows what we tell it.  The very reason we usually don't put functional legs on computers is that they'll march off a cliff if we tell it to.... they know nothing at all beyond what we tell them. 


So the question then becomes this: Since computers especially large ones can make human mistakes with much greater speed and efficiency, the question must be raised, who do we trust to teach the machines, and who do we trust to monitor their output?

For example, do we trust the Chinese communists? Do we trust the Russians? A pertinent question, since both are heavily invested in software creation, and would certainly bend the facts there software is allowed to divulge to reflect their own worldview and will.

For that matter do we trust the American government? Any of those seems to me destined for immediate failure.. in the form of fact-checking on steroids. You want to talk about mind control, ultimately? That's what we're looking at here under those circumstances.

And look by no means am I playing the Luddite here. I'm not suggesting at all that we should shove the technology up on the shelf someplace and ignore it. It's here. We're not going to be able to put the genie back in the bottle.That forces us to consider the large number of philosophical and moral questions to address as this thing grows.
 

That said, there's a major difference between using AI to aid you in the shack, and using AI to run the world. So we don't have to worry about A HAL or a WOPPER launching all missiles just yet. 

Indeed, a lot of you are already using some form of AI in your chack if you have any degree of computer in your rack.  Those of you who are using grid tracker are already using AI of a sort when it predicts what the MUF is going to be for a given area of the world. You're already using AI of a sort when it spell checks you as you're (mis)-typing.

In the end, just about any computer operation, regardless what you call it,  is some level of AI which in turn is little more than a series of if/then statements.

I suppose we can argue about how much in the way of if /then constitutes what we now call AI.... at what point does the machine "wake up"... But in my view, AI has been coming for some time and growing.

Some of you will remember that I have already mentioned that I run a heavily computerized shack. I find it a very effective way to operate.

That said caution is advised. There's a limit to how far I plan on taking this.