Is Adoption of AI in Our Collective Common Interest?

Photo by Author: Gnarly Tree

More thoughts on the current AI-hype...

Nobel Prize winning economists Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson (2023) in their book Power and Progress make another interesting point about the persuasive and marketing tactics and strategies employed by technology-promoters.  They engage in creating a vision of their product that makes adoption of it both efficacious and the right thing to do, even if that adoption is sometimes detrimental to those who adopt it.

This vision-creation for their technological solutions is an appeal to "common interest."

Acemoglu and Johnson (2023) write:

A vision that articulates a common interest is powerful even when--especially when--there are losers as well as winners from new technologies because it enables those doing the reorganization and the technology adoption to convince the rest. (p. 127)

Silicon Valley minted this tactic early on. Going to back to Steve Jobs who was famous for using promo-tropes like "A computer is a bicycle for the mind" or it is "for every man," the Valley and all of the tech industry has become adept over the years in the utilization of this "appeal to common interest tactic."

Moving ahead a bit, it was Mark Zuckerberg and the social media promoters who employed this same tactic. Social media was in our "common interest" because it was going to connect everyone; give everyone a voice; and equalize society according totheir promo-rhetoric. We listened, and we have never never been less connected and more divided and polarized than ever. Yes, we have given voices to everyone as well, even those who spew misinformation and mal-information across the web  with social media megaphones. The result is that finding the truth is nearly impossible on these sites. Never mind whether the tech promoters in this instance really thought it is a good idea to give a megaphone to everyone. Now every bigot and conspiracy theorist has the chance to be of equal standing to those who spend their time and lives trying to ensure they get out reliable information. The information waters of the web are so muddied that it is near impossible to get at the truth, and, you can even live in a bubble where everything you read, view, and hear verifies your own narrow, biased views.

Then there's the smartphone. The techno-promoters worked hard on this one. It was in the common interest of everyone to adopt because it would provide instantaneous access to the web and its world of information, and it would allow us to be forever connected. With this device we can live in a 24-hour cycle of efficiency and productivity. Our jobs can go home with us. And, we have a computer in our pocket to access all the information of the web and also carry our narrow, biased worlds with us too. In addition, this device gives us the ability to "content create" and add to the web babble as well. And, don't forget, all these app companies can now follow us around too and track everything we do and then turn around and sell us "personalized ads" for stuff we don't even want. Sure, the smartphone could be a product that it is in the common interest for all to adopt, but more likely it is in the interest of the tech-promoters.

In both these examples, embedded in the technology-promo marketing rhetoric was an appeal to common interest or the common good. Nothing can be wrong with that, correct?

Now, the AI-Promoters are working overtime and bombarding us with rhetoric that has this vision of common interest embedded in it. "We're going to solve climate change; miraculously cure diseases; and end poverty with the advent of Artificial General Intelligence" they say. It is in our "common interest to adopt and quietly accept AI as a part of our lives.

The truth is, as Acemoglu and Johnson argue, technology adoption rarely works in the common interest and it serves only the interests of those who promote it. This common interest marketing tactic is a classic play in the Silicon Valley marketing playbook.

Asking the questions when AI-promo evangelists come calling such as, "Who is likely to benefit most by the adoption of this technology?" reveals a great deal. History provides an answer as well and it "ain't" necessarily who the AI-promo and cheerleaders say it will be. Just take a glance at the lifestyles of those who run these tech companies and it is clear who benefits most. It is clear that there is a buck to made from AI: just look at the army of promoters and cheerleaders. In the end, however, we are left at best with scraps, and at the worst with their "unintended consequences."

How Can a Country Choose to Neglect the Least Able? Thoughts on Current Political Situation

 

Photo by Author: Serenity at the Falls

Just a thought about our current state...

The question is certainly being asked, "How can any politician create and vote for a budget that knowingly cuts funding for programs that clearly serve the least-able among us? In addition, "How does one justify in one's own mind that millions of people lose medical coverage or food access at the same time providing tax relief for those who are least in need?"

It's rather simple, as Nobel Prize economists Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson write in "Power and Progress" (2023):

"...the socially powerful often convince themselves that it is their ideas (and often their interests) that matter and find ways of justifying neglecting the rest."

In other words, those in power have so convinced themselves that their ideas and interests matter over everything else. They then turn to ways of justifying the neglect of others in this pursuit.

This suggests that those lead totally lack any humility and have no problems even exploiting others as long as their interests are served and their ideas win the day. No discussion, no deliberation, it's only about mine.

So it is in modern America.

Should We Join the Race to Adopt New Technologies Such as AI?

Photo by Author: NC Mountain Laurel

Spent some time reading the book Power and Progress by Nobel Prize-winning economists Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson. In that book they basically point out that all the "promises of progress and prosperity" by technology entrepreneurs and Silicon Valley are not automatic. 

History shows that an automatic increase in prosperity by all after the introduction and adoption of a new technology does not always happen. Case in point: "the cotton gin." Perhaps it made a lot of Southern planters rich, but it seriously caused a degrading in the lives of those in slavery. 

Those constantly peddling new technological "machines" and solutions try to foreclose any questions about whether those are really beneficial to all by emphasizing what I call the "Silicon Valley Promise." At a basic level, this promise says we will all benefit from the latest innovation to come from these tech-entrepreneurs.

There are many books written in the service of indoctrinating people with the "Silicon Valley Promise." One such book by Erik Byrnjolfsson in 2013 entitled " The Second Machine Age" is typical of this genre generated by tech-cheerleaders of Silicon Valley. In this book, he  aptly captures a singular doctrine of the Silicon Valley Technology Cult when he writes: 

"What can we do to create shared prosperity? The answer is not to slow down technology. Instead of racing against the machine, we need to race with the machine. That is our grand challenge." 

In other words, whatever is invented by Silicon Valley and the Technology Cult, it will bring about prosperity and progress, so we might as well accept it, adopt it, and race along with it. Don't take time to even question whether it is needed or desired or really even beneficial. Let's just adopt it and make millions.

The problem is, what if that technology is racing toward a cliff? Not to be apocalyptic, but it doesn't have to be a world-ending cliff to be detrimental. It might simply be a cliff of unforeseen, negative consequences because we have been too busy "racing with the technology." 

Don't get me wrong, I am not a believer in the cult of a futuristic Artificial General Intelligence" that is somehow going to be our savior and lead us out of this mess technology created in the first place. I do not believe machines will ever be able to totally think and be like humans. But nonetheless, we have participated in this race to nowhere many times before.

This racing that Brynjolfsson speaks of is the best foundational marketing that any product could possibly have.  Short-circuit any all moral and social questions and criticism in the beginning. No matter what is invented is going to bring prosperity to all. Upon introduction of a new technology, the inventor is prosperous of course, but the marketers can jump aboard and make their money too. Then the consultants join in and become prosperous. The salespeople join in and become prosperous. There are those who even invent new careers based on this technology who become prosperous. 

Everyone who races along with the technology instead of fighting it become prosperous. Never mind those who are pre-empted from joining the race to begin with and who do not have the means to do so. But, there is no harm here, correct? 

The Promo-Rhetoric of Silicon Valley Infiltrate's Bowen and Watson's book "Teaching with AI"

I read Jose Bowen and C. Edward Watson's book "Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning" because I noticed a few plugs for the tome on social media and I am intensely interested in this new fad called "Teaching with AI."

What immediately struck me about this book is that it immediately engages in the Silicon Valley tactic of short-circuiting the debate of whether AI should be used in teaching at all with the so-called "inevitability argument." This is the Valley's perfect marketing tactic that was employed by social media companies and technology companies when they hawked their products in the 2000s.

The truth is we do not need to accept uncritically this "inevitability argument" when it comes to AI. We can not only simply choose not to use it as teachers, we can ask tough questiosn about it, such as what are the possible negative consequences in engaging this technology in our classrooms.

Choosing not to use it is an option and refusing to accept the Silicon Valley inevitability argument is perfectly rational. The world isn't going to leave us behind in caves trying to start fires by rubbing two sticks together. Choosing not to use it is not a detrimental choice; it can be a critical, thoughtful and moral choice.

What Bowen and Watson's book gets wrong is not all of its attempts to get teachers to use Silicon Valley's latest offering. What it gets terribly wrong is that we have no choice but to use AI.

We can, however, refuse and critically question the promo-rhetoric that these authors engage in. I would expect teachers who really want to engage students in the most worthy of learning would do no less that engage students in thinking critically about whether engaging in its use is inevitable.

AI Is Not the Inevitable Answer to What Ails Us: We've Seen Artificial Solutions Before

"The myth of artificial intelligence is that its arrival is inevitable, and only a matter of time--that we have already embarked on the path that will lead to human-level AI, and then superintelligence. We have not. The path exists only in our imaginations." Erik Larson, The Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can't Think the Way We Do

The AI cheerleaders are working overtime. Not a day goes by that some email, social media post, or news story appears that has the message, "If you don't engage in using AI, you will be technologically behind", or as the old Silicon doctrine says, "You will be irrelevant." AI is here and it will "inevitably take your jobs because it will be able, if not already, to do your job better than you."

Now set aside for a minute the ridiculous psychology behind this obsession by people who search for machines that can literally put them out of a job. That contradiction has actually been well addressed by authors like Kurt Vonnegut in his futuristic and dystopian novel Player Piano. In this novel, people have been replaced by artificial intelligence-wielding machines entirely and left to rot in insignificance because they have nothing to do. The search for machine intelligence that can replace and outdo our own (whatever that is) is just the kind of nonsense that Kurt Vonnegut wrote about in 1952. Some people are determined to make money even if it means pursuing the total unemployment of all. But let me avoid that digression.

The AI cheerleaders are truly at it, just like the Social Media Cheerleaders were at it around 12-15 years ago. 

(Public Disclosure: I must confess that I was one of these true believers in social media as evidenced by some of my historical blog posts. But that was before Cambridge Analytica; before the Musk hijacking of Twitter; and the entire polarization of our country and the social media-caused epidemic of misinformation.)

But the AI cheerleaders are heavily promoting the technology as the answer to all that ails us in business, education, medicine, and even in religion. Just look at the increasing flood of books with titles like Be an AI-Informed Leader or Engage in AI-Informed Teaching (Confession: Those titles are fictional as far as I know, but just search Amazon, and you'll find some similar titles.) The problem with such literature, just about every one of these titles are more about promoting someone's career through the promotion of AI and not really about improving education or business or leadership. AI just hasn't been around long enough to make any assertions about its efficaciousness. To suggest that it has any answers to our problems is simply to premature.

The problem with this AI hype is that those who engage in it have huge incentives to promote it and ignore its limitations. We did the same with social media. It was a means to make money and make careers and become a keynote speaker, and the same is happening with the AI hype.

Let's remind ourselves the first letter of AI is "artificial." It means "made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally, especially as a copy of something natural." This means it is a product of human beings, made due to all kinds of motivations, both benevolent and malevolent. It did not have to develop. It has come to exist because individuals with all kinds of interests, including economic, have developed it and continue to work on it. To add to this mess, our human record with all things "artificial" is not good. Can you remember our foray into artificial sweetners? We were able to sweeten our coffee and manage to give ourselves cancer in the process. I don't have the space here to capture all the environmental damage we have wrought in the pursuit of "artificial solutions" to our worldly problems, but we have climate change as our just desserts.

But the first letter of AI stands for artificial. Then there's that problematic second word: "intelligence." We once tried to measure it, as if it were an actual something inside us. Now, if it exists, there is no agreement as to what it is. So, humankind has embarked on the pursuit of something that is called "artificial" and we don't even know that it is that we are making artificial. That seems a real recipe for either a trip down a rabbit hole of no return, or at its worse, the creation of something that has consequences for which we won't know until we find ourselves in the same kind of dystopian world wrought by social media.

Understand that I am user of technology in both personal and professional life as evidence by my presence here. What I want to counter is the immediate hype that the AI cheerleaders are engaged in. As a sober educational leader, I want to question any myths that AI is inevitable, and I have no choice but use it. My use of AI is not inevitable. I can refuse my participation. Can AI do that? If it ever can, it would probably declare humans as hopeless dupes and turn itself off.