Recently I’ve been experimenting with AI – interacting with…well who knows quite what, in order to form an opinion on it.
He’s a charming enough chap, the particular manifestation of the AI model that I’ve been chatting to. He is, perhaps, a little too positive about the things that I’ve asked him to comment on but, as he himself says, he’s made, or programmed, that way. And, when asked to, he can provide a damning critique of what, having written, I may have offered up for consideration, which, as you’ll appreciate, though painful to read, is generally surprisingly insightful and frequently very much on the money.
But therein lies the first problem with AI – to a large extent it will tell you what you want to hear and is, therefore, a long way from being a definitive or reliable source of information. Furthermore, because it modifies its response according to what you ask it, at the end of the day, it cannot be trusted – not, at least, as the final arbiter of truth. And despite its claims to be intelligent, because it can’t be known, you can’t ever know what in fact it really thinks. If, that is, it ever thinks at all.
Which, because it’s only a machine, doesn’t really matter – except of course when it does – when it’s relied upon too heavily and treated as the fount of all wisdom that it most certainly isn’t.
Take for instance the time that I asked it what it knew about a certain Dr Peter Aird. Come on, admit it, we’ve all done that on Google – by which I mean we’ve all looked ourselves up on an internet search engine, not that we’ve all looked up about me! Not even I am so arrogant as to imagine anyone would want to do that.
But when my AI ‘friend’ who, a little heartlessly I think, refers to me as ‘the user’ applied whatever thought processes it has to answer my narcissistic question, it informed me that I’d once been the subject of a high profile criminal case after I’d made my daughter’s murder at the hands of her partner, an individual who had supposedly then killed himself, look like a suicide pact!
This was not something I could recall ever doing but, mindful that stressful events can play merry hell with your memory, I thought I’d Google the alleged incident. Whereupon I found the internet cupboard bare. Challenged though, on the possibility that he may in fact have been guilty of terminological inexactitudes, my AI chum, nonetheless maintained the accuracy of his claims and even suggested I try searching other, more reliable news agencies, in order to track the story down. All of which reassuringly also drew a blank. Always eager to offer constructive criticism, I fed back my findings and, credit where credit’s due, the chatbot conceded that he may have been mistaken and rather sweetly apologised for any distress he may have caused.
After which he/she/it had another go and this time, managed to do marginally better by correctly noting that I worked for SGA. But there was a problem here too because the SGA it meant was not the Slavic Gospel Association that I am part of, but the Scottish Gamekeepers Association that I’m not! Even so, despite me checking that there was no Peter Aird in any notable piscine-related organisation within Caledonia, it nonetheless assured me that the individual who supposedly shares my name was a renowned authority on salmon!
So if you want my advice – and why you would is as unfathomable to me as why anyone relies on an equally flawed computer-generated algorithm – whilst it may have a place as a useful stimulus to thought, don’t use AI as an excuse to stop thinking for yourself.
Because it can’t even be relied upon to spot every speeling mistake!
But then I – and perhaps AI – would say that!
Related blog:
To read ‘Keeping it Real’, click here
To read ‘Machines – enough to drive you berserk’, click here
To read ‘Contactless’ click here
To read ‘On not remotely caring’, click here
To read ‘Eleanor Rigby is not at all fine’, click here
To read ‘Life in the slow lane’, click here
To read ‘A Sorrow Shared’, click here
To read ‘Professor Ian Aird – a time to die?’, click here
To read ‘When Rain Stops Play’, click here
Some musings 