Everyone, by this time, regardless of the industry they contribute to, is acutely aware of the existence and adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI), or Machine Learning, across many sectors. Outside the technical realms, AI is regarded as a highly advanced tool in possibly bringing about a more optimistic and stress-free future while also inducing the possibility of an unpredictable and threatening eventuality.
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AI’s continued penetration in education, research, and business has now dug deeper into the social psyche, making it a cultural phenomenon in every aspect of our life. It is regularly presented to the public on the news, movies, tv shows with a bipolar disorder hailed as both our savior and a weapon at the same time.
As such, AI is very much misunderstood and, in many cases, misused. Worse, many are fearful of it, including OpenAI founder, Elon Musk, calling it humanity’s “biggest existential threat” and likened it to “summoning the demon.”
How can the advancement of humanity be founded on a tool shadowed with worry and fear?
The Purpose of Tools
If you had to create any tool for yourself, it would most likely be designed to free you from a laboring task (or tasks.) The freedom gained allows you to invest more time and focus on whatever creative process you want to partake in and elevate. This type of elevation directly or indirectly enhances the self — essentially, becoming more aware and conscious of themselves and their surroundings. And together, will raise the collective’s consciousness leaving laboring jobs to machines.
A tool of any type requires information to process to fulfill its design — in other words, think — whether it’s digitally or physically based. Tools have exponentially evolved in every generation, increasing their thinking powers in ways we can’t even understand. As a result, human thought, which is fundamentally processing, will be outdone by such tools a million times more in a much shorter time than we realize. AI has already proven its capabilities in the early stages of its widespread adoption and applications. Robotics will soon find harmony and congruence with AI in our daily lives, further proving their superior capability, capacity, accuracy, and speed.
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The critical question now comes, what does one do when surrounded by such tools that can out-think and out-task them at any moment?
Moreover, how would one create said tools to empower themselves — despite the tools’ intellectual and mechanical superiority?
Can Tools be Neutral?
Creators surround themselves with tools that are highly knowledgeable and intellectual through their historical evidence-based data. They exist to guide the creator at any moment, especially when it is most critical.
Unfortunately, all guides are intrinsically biased due to how their own designers’ bias modeled each. It is still up to the creator to decide how to proceed based on the acquired knowledge — even when the desired outcome seems illogical to the guides. The ideal “team” would not be about trust per se but more about offering unbiased and neutral guidance as much as possible to free everyone, including the creator, for the most control over their decision-making process.
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Such all-encompassing artists are always craving for the highest resolution and most intelligent canvas available, so their expression can be more detailed and comprehensive as possible. And as such, a hyper-focused guide that can think a million times more will consistently offer more potentialities to the creator. The potential opportunities here are distinct creative energies unique to the creator that do not necessarily align or exist in a historical-based decision-making process on which tools are based — the root of all innovation and invention.
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It seems, then, to unravel this new creative potential within us, we need to surround our creative processes with systems and tools that are neutral foundations and participants, respectively. Even so, a so-called “neutral” tool is only as beneficial as the creators’ and the environmental biases it occupies.
How do we then create such tools? And with what bases do humanity’s tools founded? Subsequently, what would be the intrinsic values of these tools to sustain us for generations to come? More specifically, in what mindset should we employ when creating these tools?
Environmental Bias
The fact of the matter is that the environment we are endeavoring to employ with such advanced tools is inherently biased as a reward system fueled by the need for a survival mindset. Liberating a creator from such a vestige environment would be the first step before employing any form of tools. While at the same time, introducing a tool to liberate a creator in such an opposing environment will undoubtedly create chaos, promptly looking for entropy.
Let’s take the infamous single-vehicle self-driving car Trolley Problem. The Trolley problem, first posed in the early 20th century, is one of the most widely recognized puzzles in ethics and moral philosophy. In our context, the question concerns the decision of an AI-driven autonomous vehicle that is suddenly presented with two pedestrians crossing the road with no chance of avoidance if it stays within the boundaries of the road. Additionally, the AI could have the option to veer off either side of the road and hit a tree killing the passenger.
Assuming the pedestrians will always be slow to react, and death is sure, what would be the ideal solution for the car to exercise? Is sacrifice inevitable? Why does such a predicament exist in the first place?
What is presented here is an example of an apparent dichotomy where two different foundational mindsets are attempting to co-exist. The autonomous vehicle tool, in this case, is created with a labor-reduction mindset while the current applied road systems are not. Let’s unpack this further by looking into the other, less-discussed tool involved – the road.
The road itself is a tool created with a vehicle-first vs. a people-first mindset. When a person attempts to cross the road, they are presented with a situation where they have to look twice before crossing, or their life can be in jeopardy — a survival mechanism. What would a road be then that has a people-first mindset? That’s when roads are fundamentally being applied with a single purpose for people driven in said vehicles with no other human (or animal) need or can cross it. The idea of a crosswalk is, in fact, an error of design primarily to satisfy specific requirements that don’t have all people in mind — a temporary patch that wasn’t truly resolved. Such a design gave the road, in certain instances, boss-like characteristics that no one requested but must conform.
In many ways, Elon Musk’s THE BORING COMPANY has a more congruent solution to a people-first mindset than a typical road. However, it was primarily conceived to patch the existing road predicaments in the first place. On the other hand, the hyperloop takes it further to encapsulate itself with a single-driven solution and a sustainability mindset.
Having an idea for a tool is one thing; applying it sustainably with a people-first mindset is another thing altogether, but the clues are right in front of us.
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Technology is not the answer to a joyful and blissful life. However, it can help guide us towards a peaceful one in a chaotic environment. It’s time to point our fingers away from tools and back at ourselves. Our humanity is our responsibility. The tools we create bring about the immaterial within us on many creative levels that they cannot.
All tools must be created as neutral participants and judicially applied in every aspect of our lives — where it truly matters. Throughout all these innovations, the individual has not been able to slow down, freely create, or eliminate stress. Such an “individual” has vanished in all of the noise of non-congruent systems and tools. The idea of stress management is in itself proof of how a survival mindset must be the way—stress should not exist in the first place.
When we eliminate the need to educate our children with survival tools, that’s how we know that we are starting to live with an opportunity to enhance the quality of life. Enhancing the quality of life, however, is a misnomer. The neutral tools we create are meant to eliminate the need for you to survive. The enhancement portion, however, is on you.
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