Allyson Johnson

Pieces of my Mind

Archive for the month “February, 2025”

18 Feb 2025
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Artificial Intelligence – a Cosmic Joke?

The media is full of information and speculation about AI – Artificial Intelligence.  Will it supplant human intelligence?  Will robots become sentient?  Will humans become obsolete, or at best slaves to their robot superiors?

Most of this speculation is poppycock, fueled by a misnomer.  AI as we see it in operation does not involve intelligence at all.  AI is a form of search technology that, in response to a request, can search through gazillions of online data points, accumulate the ones which seem relevant, and serve them up either as an undigested mass of trivial and not-so trivial information or a digested mass of pablum which reflects only the most common points made about the subject. 

At best, AI is a tool which can facilitate research by searching online texts, posts, and scanned media for keywords.  But it cannot judge which of the texts, posts or other media are most relevant to the question.  It cannot judge whether a given text is fact or fantasy.  For that you need a human interpreter.

“Generative” AI can take the results of its research and, based on its scans of human writings, deliver it in the form of an essay or article.  But in aping human writing, it may slide over gaps in its story by inventing plausible-sounding text to fill in the gap.  Even AI experts can be taken in, as was Stanford professor Jeff Hancock, who was called as an expert witness in a case involving AI-generated “deep fake” photos.  Hancock used OpenAI’s ChatGPT to find and summarize articles on how AI can generate misinformation, and failed to notice that the software had inserted non-existent sources in spots where Hancock had noted “needs citation” in his request. [San Jose Mercury News, Dec 4 2024]  His testimony was thrown out.

I’ve begun to see generative AI’s pre-digested paragraphs popping up in unwelcome places.  Google search now often delivers an AI-generated paragraph in answer to such questions as “How often should I water my orchids?” and Microsoft’s CoPilot offers to summarize my incoming emails. But these paragraphs have no flavor or nuance, no detail or  backup or discussion of possible exceptions. 

Google has realized that the more web content is generated by AI rather than humans, the less reliable and interesting that content is going to be.  Further, the more people rely on these AI-generated summaries, the less they will scroll down to the sponsored links which generate Google’s revenue.  Melissa Schilling, professor of management at New York University’s Stern School of Business, has said “AI is to search what e-commerce was to Walmart.”

If the degradation of the Internet were the only adverse side effect of AI’s rise, we would have enough to worry about.  But AI is not just an attention-getting device.  It is a terribly hungry and expensive device.  According to Deepa Seetharaman writing in the Wall Street Journal [Dec 21, 2024, p. B1],” a six-month training run for a new AI product can cost around half a billion dollars in computing costs alone.”  The data centers which provide the computing power that AI needs to run require hefty amounts of energy, water for cooling, and land to build on.  Already some cities such as Atlanta are pushing back against the takeover of greenspace in its suburbs by proliferating data centers.   [WSJ Dec 28, 2024]

Our civilization is already struggling with climate change. We are trying desperately to cut back on the use of fossil fuels.  We urge water conservation to stop the desertification of open land due to the deterioration of underground aquifers and diversion of surface water for agriculture and industry.  But the energy requirements of the expanding AI industry will gobble up all the gains we have made in this area and demand still more energy to fuel its growth.  Already the energy requirements of AI are equal to the energy used by the Netherlands. [CITE?]

Is AI a kind of cosmic joke?  Just at the time when we need most to conserve water and energy, the Universe dangles this glittering toy in front of our innovation-hungry eyes. Humanity has a poor record of resisting temptation.  Will we be able to resist this time? 

Posted in Events and tagged
11 Feb 2025
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American Dream?

Mark Zuckerberg, Lauren Sanchez, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk during the inauguration in the rotunda of the US Capitol. Photographer: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP Photo/Bloomberg

Much comment has arisen about the front row seats at Trump’s inauguration being occupied by four of the richest men in the world.  Most of the comment implied that there was some plutocratic takeover of the government in mind, and Trump’s favored seating of these uber-capitalists was a slap in the face to the blue-collar workers who rallied to put him in office.  But there is another, more positive aspect of this lineup.  Viewed through a different lens, these men exemplify the American Dream in one of its major aspects – that through hard work and merit, an immigrant can achieve success.

Mark Zuckerberg’s great-grandparents were emigrants from Austria, Germany, and Poland. By the time Mark was born on May 14, 1984, in White Plains, New York, his family had attained prosperity as medical professionals.

Jeff Bezos was the natural son of a second-generation Danish immigrant, and was adopted when he was four years old by his mother’s second husband, a Cuban immigrant who came to the US as a refugee when he was sixteen. Miguel Bezos worked at Exxon for thirty-two years, and lend $250,000 to his adopted son in 1995 to start Amazon in exchange for 6% equity in the new company.  He and his son are now both billionaires.

Lauren Sanchez, Jeff Bezos’ fiancée, was born to a second-generation Mexican-American family in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  She was an award-winning news anchor and sports commentator when she became engaged to Jeff Bezos in March 2023.

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet Inc. and its subsidiary Google,  was born in India to a middle-class family.  He became a US citizen after arriving in the United States in 1993 to pursue graduate school at Stanford and later at the Wharton School in Pennsylvania. He worked as an engineer and product manager at Applied Materials before joining Google in 2004.  His annual salary is north of two million with another six million in “other compensation”. 

Elon Musk was born in South Africa.  His father was an successful engineering consultant and property developer, and also owned an interest in an emerald mine. At the age of 18 Elon immigrated to Canada, acquiring its citizenship through his Canadian-born mother, Maye. He moved to the US and become a US citizen in 2002, retaining his Canadian and South African citizenship.

All these front-row seats are occupied by people who are no more than three generations away from immigration.  Not all their immigrant forebears were “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses” but they all in some way “yearned to breathe free.”  Their success is just what many of the blue-collar and middle-class voters who flocked to Trump would dream of.  This success, as much as the wealth it generated, earned them their front-row seats.

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