NATIONS are busy preparing for a future dominated by Artificial Intelligence (AI). Although with us for a good while now, it is with the advent of “machine learning” that AI is said to have finally arrived.
“Machine learning” is the software that sifts through data, learns and makes conclusions from them. Among its simpler uses, it enables Facebook, Amazon, etc. to learn from your personal data what ads are suited to your needs or into what language (yours) to translate a message or post. Driverless cars maneuver with it through traffic without mishap.
The Terminator (movie) series showcases how formidable thinking machines could be. Yet, the whole series presumes that man’s war against them will ultimately result in his victory. In theory this is logical because man is its creator and can choose to terminate the machine.
In practice this may not be so. Machines are winning because neo-liberals (of capitalist, communist or other variety) develop and use AI to exploit earth’s resources to the max for their benefit. That means the planet’s destruction could come sooner than we think but not before these exploiters have built (with AI) spaceships to carry them to safe-havens, built also with AI, in other planets. If you think this is science fiction, think again.
(Still without AI capabilities, domestic exploiters do not mind the Philippines’ eventual destruction by their greed because they all have residences, properties and investments abroad to escape to.)
We have defined ourselves as rational animals yet we have been anything but rational in the way we manage life on earth. In any case, our rationality has led to too many wars of aggression and genocide and Earth is littered with victims of man’s rational but destructive mind.
Yet, in the final analysis, we are human not so much that we have a rational mind as that we have a loving heart. What separates us from other creatures of God and machines of man is our distinctly human capacity to love and be loved. Our heart not our mind is what defines us as humans. Our mind running amok over our hearts is what is destroying our world.
Thus, until we learn to be a human community again, loving and caring for one another, artificially intelligent machines will be tools of our eventual destruction by those among us who are inhuman and so lack the heart to avoid destroying everything that stands in the way of their greedy machinations.
Heart, not reason, makes us human. Reason has only led us to chaos and destruction. Earth’s hope of surviving destruction by rational man lies in our becoming more human and less of a machine that, for all its artificial intelligence, cannot shed a tear or break into a smile for others.