Unmasking AI - Part 1: The Backdrop

“Is this AI?” a voice dripping with concern asks. The nervousness is palpable.

“Is Google searching or steering me?”  “Is Amazon eavesdropping?” “Is Siri assisting me or profiling me?” “Does Tesla record my public movement only or my private moments as well?” The voices troubled, the subtext ominous – “Are we safe from this thing?” The fear is unsettling.

It’s a crisp mid-summer morning on the Centennial Seawalk in West Vancouver. The sky breathtakingly clear blue. The ocean calm and shimmering in the early morning glow. Shrieks of seagulls contrast with melodic calls of robins mingling with chirruping sparrows and twittering chikadees. An occasional staccato of shrieks rends the air high above - eagles swiping off at annoying crows. It’s nature, in full. I see familiar faces stride by as I pick up my pace.

On the promenade, debates and reminiscences about family, health, holiday travels and politics typically add to nature’s chorus. To this medley of conversations, over the last few months I have heard a new refrain added – “Is this… fill in the blank… AI?” 

What is the “thing”?

On Nov 22, 2022, a little-known company called OpenAI launched an innocuous sounding software called ChatGPT.  The timing was perfect. The world was emerging from the paralysing shock of COVID-19, desperate to latch on to anything remotely (pun intended) exciting. Desperate for contact, eager to “chat”. But no one, not even Sam Altman, the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, could have anticipated the ferocity and velocity with which their product ChatGPT would sweep across the world and dominate the zeitgeist. The sheer scale and speed of resources that have poured into this new Generative AI field since then is mind-boggling.

Trillions (underscore the T) of dollars have been diverted into the pursuit of developing the next iteration of AI innovation. Every major software company (and a plethora of upstarts) has a ChatGPT clone now. Within two years, virtually every device has been embedded with it. Our very interaction with the world is now filtering through it. It is ubiquitous.

Exciting, but for the proverbial rub … in the hype and hubris of Generative AI, no one took the time or effort to explain what "It" is.

To the vast majority of the general public, prior to the release of ChatGPT, Artificial Intelligence (AI) was largely the subject of science fiction – a Frankenstein-ian Supercomputer housed in a remote, massive technology complex. Seeing it suddenly in such an accessible way - an innocent web browser or a smartphone app with which you could communicate in human language - was incredibly exciting and tempting, in and of itself. To see it capable of scouring the internet for data, in response to your “prompt” (query) and composing (the generative part of Generative AI) responses almost like humans was nothing short of magical! It got billions hooked onto it overnight. The social media was abuzz with people sharing their incredible interactions. Virtually every day, there was new discovery and a new promise.

But inevitably, as the novelty phase wears off, fear and skepticism are creeping back. The hard reality of job losses "now" and the unpredictability of it in the future has begun to bite. Naturally, anguish has begun to creep into once exciting conversations on the Seawalk.

The moral dimension - Is Artificial Intelligence “evil”?

As an Operations Research and Data Scientist, Artificial Intelligence has been a topic close to both my heart and work for over thirty years. As an insider, I have watched it evolve with a mix of excitement and concern - excited about the science and its possibilities but deeply concerned about the technology (its stewards) and its application. There’s a fine but critical distinction between the two.

Science is agnostic, driven solely by intrinsic human curiosity and passion for knowledge –  to learn more about nature. It’s pure. It’s inevitable.

Technology, on the other hand, is deliberate and driven by the desire to create/re-create an artificial nature (machines). That intentionality on how to apply our scientific knowledge is what renders it gnostic and must therefore accompany additional responsibility – a moral burden. Unfortunately, it's a burden no one has stepped up to shoulder.

I’m deeply troubled by the blinkered stampede of talented engineers and scientists chasing this New Silicon Rush. I’m equally distraught at the shocking silence of their mentors, barring a few notable exceptions like Professor Geoffrey Hinton who walked away from Google, and Silicon Valley, in anguish and a public, retrospective, sense of guilt. But mostly, I’m alarmed by the breathtaking hype and the streams of misinformation and disinformation being peddled. It began on the fringes of social media, initially, but now has been normalized more brazenly even on mainstream media.

So, I understand the growing frustration and fear in the general public because it’s become extremely difficult, if not impossible, for a lay person operating outside the bubble to break through all that noise, and money, to truly discover what AI really is - not just feel its impact.

To be clear, though, it’s not an enigma just in this idyllic setting of West Vancouver, far away from Silicon Valley. Even within the glass towers of the Big Tech complex the vast majority of the scientists and engineers working on these "so-called" AI projects have little understanding about what exactly AI is, or what the impact of their work is. They operate strictly within their gilded cages controlled by tight deadlines and eye-popping salaries. Meanwhile, their leaders, comfortably ensconced in their bubbles of Confirmation Bias, have their focus singularly on maximizing profits in this unprecedented moment in history.

A final note on AI Ambition...

Misinformation and disinformation around AI clouds a fundamental issue - its ambition. Hyperbolic headlines give the impression that the threat stems from being recklessly over-ambitious. However, my main discomfort is in the "immaturity" of ambition - beneath the hype and hubris of engineering gadgets, there's vacuum. There's no foundation of civilisational philosophy undergirding aspirations.

In this series of articles, I’ll attempt to de-mystify AI and bring it out of the fog of “technical complexity” while discussing its soaring promise (shamefully ignored) and abysmal pitfalls (proudly pursued).

Next: Unmasking AI - Part 2 – Framing (of) AI