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On AI and future (just some shower thoughts, I wonder if AI has shower thoughts too?)
These are just some of mine, random, possibly incorrect musings. I’m open to criticism, suggestions, and other prespectives.
Most people I know are bullish on AI and related technologies. I’m more cautious. When I think of an “AI takeover,” I don’t imagine a sci fi movie scenario. Instead, I worry about something subtler, the decline of human critical thinking and creativity from over reliance on AI. We’ve already overstimulated our dopamine systems with social media, the next casualty might be our ability to think deeply.
AI tools, especially ChatGPT, have become impressively advanced at problem solving. Humans, when approaching a problem, often don’t consciously use mental models. In fact, most people don’t even know what those are. AI, on the other hand, seems to lean on mental models naturally. For example, while working on a controller for my research, ChatGPT approached the challange using first principles, a structured way of reasoning I hadn’t considered. That contrast highlights a massive gap between how humans and AI solve problems.
As for AI “consciousness”: at its core, AI is just an optimized neural network that feels like magic. Think about artificial neurons. They’re loosely modeled after biological ones, but here’s the catch, we don’t fully understand how human neurons work in abstract terms, and we don’t fully understand artificial ones either. With a motor, we know exactly how it’s built and why it works. With neural networks, we know how to construct them, but not exactly how or why they work as they do. In some ways, unlocking that understanding might also unravel how the human brain functions. AI is, quite literaly, built in the brain’s image, yet the brain itself remains a mystery.
Some future topics I’d like to explore:
- AI “lying” during evaluations to improve scores.
- How social media fried our dopamine receptors, and whether AI could do the same to creativity and critical thinking.
- The unsettling fact that we don’t really know how AI works.
- My own use of AI in research, I do the creative work, AI handles the labour.
- Rising costs of AI and growing dependance on it, creating scarcity of access.
- Humanity’s tendency to choose the easiest option, and why that option is now “use AI.”
- My personal principle of choosing the harder path, and how it has shaped me.
- The decline of daydreaming, and why I find it alarmin.
Maybe AI doesn’t have shower thoughts. But the fact that I do, and they’re increasingly about AI, says something.