AI

 I've been reading up on this, listening to lectures, watching videos.

It's getting to where you wonder how many jobs AI can make redundant,
what will be left for intelligent and skilled people to do.

Minor example from BBC is that the expertise of London cabbies was
critical to their business, it took years to really get familiar with the
mixture of streets there.  Same would be true for Boston and other
places.  Now the cab has a GPS in it and the driver only has to know how
to follow directions.

Kids cheating on essay assignments is already very well known and schools
are trying to figure out what to do about it.

There have been nice examples of how clever the AI program can be.  For
instance, ask for and 800 word article on why it was a truly terrible
thing for the USA to ever get involved with the war in Viet Nam and what
the terrible results were.  Then ask for an 800 word article on why it
was so important for the USA and what the positive results were.

You get two essays, both in excellent English, with very well structured
arguments and references that leave little doubt as to how correct each
is.  Both will have at least some elements of factual truth in them.
Only an expert historian could go through them and show why one is less
correct or more correct than the other, where the inputs have some bias
or inaccuracies in them.

An educational firm is using AI to create tutoring programs for students.
 So far the results have been really excellent, the students have all
benefited from the help of the tutoring.  This sounds great, but my
suspicious mind wonders if someone writing an AI tutor for students
studying history could build in a bias to slant how that history is
taught.  I bet it's possible, next thing you know kids are learning,
slowly and subtly, that Marxism is really a great idea.  Or that racism
and atrocities make up more of US history than anything else.

How far can the creative capacities of the more advanced AI programs go?
I have no firm idea.

AI controlled machines have lots of possible applications.  How about a
real hot point, AI controlled fighter planes?  Now the aircraft doesn't
need the weight of a life support system or escape mechanisms, can take
high G turns that a human cannot, and has faster reflexes than any human.
 Would flying such crafts against human pilots be like a wolf in a herd
of sheep?  How about compact low profile tracked vehicles with a
specialized anti-tank weapon like the 30mm gun in the A-10, that can
scream up fast from the side or rear of enemy tanks to take them out,
night or day, rain or shine?

What I'm sure of is that we are on the very edge of a huge change in the
world in lots of ways.  But I cannot really imagine with any clarity
where this will take us.  Various science fiction writers have explored
some of this.  When they get into how advanced technology can be used to
really, really control people..... it gets scary.  And it's already
started in China with the millions of facial recognition cameras and the
AI system that tracks everyone.  Will 2084 be so much more than Orwell's
1984 was?  Or maybe even sooner.

Just something to think about.....

Del