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NOW HANG ON
Friday Aug. 16, 2019
Soon, machines working 24/7 advancing something further than we could imagine will overtake our capacity to think, innovate and change that fast.
Or have they already?
Everything we consider as new idea, new product or unique creation is likely not – just our first exposure to something that is already real. Someone has done it, thought it, moved it along further than we might have ever imagined.
What happens when machines think better than we can?
I don’t mean have more information – because that ship already sailed. But when decisions are made based on a fact set, will some algorithm in the cloud decide better than we ever could – and in a nanosecond?
What happens when it is 97% right, 97% of the time?
Will we hold out for 98% or simply turn those decisions over to machines – and hasn’t that happened already?
At first blush that might seem far-fetched, but not for software engineers programming driverless vehicles. Every large organization and every Silicon Valley startup is way ahead of our comparatively feeble brains on this, and A.I. is still in its infancy.
What happens when citizens elect a machine or software program to run governments? Easy to scoff, but as systems get better, more complex problems get solved by our tools and fewer real people are needed for everything. What will we do – and, more importantly, will we lose our ability or abdicate our responsibility for solving problems and making choices?
If these thoughts resonate with others it doesn’t mean I/we are right, it just means we are similar.
Life should have handlebars.
Hang on.
Tight.
In our lifetimes ‘movement of progress’ means change, quickening pace of changes and incremental growth in knowledge beyond our capacity and which produced A.I. (artificial intelligence). Essential because no human has time or sufficient brain capacity to bring it all together on any subject.
Pace, however much we’ve each seen, will soon race faster than any scatterbrained or ADDHD child ‘squirrel’could imagine.
When assessing state of mind, perceived place in this world, and my mood du jour – connection, moment I choose, likely influenced by hours of day, or time of year, set the stage for that which preceded that moment of reflection.
Quality of experience – how we experience life and our perception of it seems widely malleable, based on when we take our temperature, perhaps our temperament.
Does when we make that assessment make it more valid, or less, or irrelevant?
Reader feedback:
Hi Mark. Thank you for another musing. I hope you never stop writing these daily as each gives me pause for thought, the desire to write my own reflections (though I do not have the writing talent and maybe that shouldn't stop me) and much pleasure. I had back surgery around the time that Gusta passed on and I got out of sync with my email reading. Thank you for archiving your musings. I went back to read Gusta Farewell today. My heart goes out to you for missing her. Warmly, MN, Fort Worth, Tex.
I’ve been thinking about getting a dog. Thanks for the column and making me think of other ways it may add to my life, ML, Calgary, AB
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