DEUS EX MACHINA
Monday, April 12, 202 - daily column #6726
I took part in a discussion – around machines, machine learning, and pandemic issues.
One question, “what is the best machine?” way too general, in my view.
For a 12-year-old, the best machine is likely the Slurpee machine at 7-11. For the geekiest among us, it might be the newest drone or video game. For me, the printing press is still the best machine. Followed by the microwave oven. Seriously, what constitutes ‘the best’ in machines? Better asked, what kind of machines do we want in the future to make our lives better?
Someone suggested a machine to replace a surgeon so that nothing can go wrong. Sounds great until you factor in software glitches, power failures, or an internet outage. Please give me the surgeon geek who got all A’s and can cut straight.
Imagine if we could make a truth-telling promise-keeping politician; we could then vote for an ideology and rely on wishes of the majority to be carried out as politicians promised. While that would be fascinating, I think that would be the last thing we might want.
At the root of these discussions is not whether we will incrementally let machines, machine learning and artificial intelligence tools take our lives, but whether we are prepared to trust intelligence to overrule instinct and where our tolerance will end. If technology makes our decisions more wisely than we might, how does that influence our ability to make decisions? Do we get lazy, do we turn to more complex decisions, or do we live on autopilot? We need a new George Orwell to help us.
I love the idea of widespread use of sensors, software, and clever clouds telling me essential data in real-time so that I can act, re-act, or not. In other words, I want the data, but I don’t want to delegate decisions about what I do or how I run my life to something chosen for me by someone else or by pieces of a software puzzle making the best choices for me.
I want technology to give me the best information possible to support my choices, but I don’t want anything or anyone making my choices for me. And I know they do to some degree, but it should be directed by parameters I set, the criterion of my choosing.
Maybe a machine could write my novel, or this column if properly programmed.