The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

You see, recently I saw this image from the IBM training manual of 1979.

Interesting isn’t it.

That even then, they both saw the power and the potential folly of enabling technology to have ‘too much’ autonomy.

But these days, it’s all the rage … driven far more by a quest for profit than a desire to make life better for all.

As I have written many times, the issue is rarely with the tech, but the people behind it.

Not just in terms of their motivations, but their frames-of-reference.

In many cases, they’re spoilt, little boys all desperate to be seen as the next Edison, Tesla or Newton … conveniently forgetting that Tesla, Edison and Newton were driven by a desire to expand and enable human possibilities rather than neuter it.

Of course, what accelerates this attitude and adoption is a sharemarket that blindly rewards any organsation that spouts those two little letters in all they do … which helps explain why I am seeing the letters ‘AI’ being thrown about in the same way WeWork tried to convince everyone they were a tech company rather than an office leasing company.

Just recently I watched an ad for an air conditioning unit that said it used AI to work out what temperature they needed to be.

Errrrm, excuse me … but hasn’t that option been around for donkey’s years.

Same with the car brand that claimed they used AI to ensure the car would perfectly match the driving conditions.

Give me a fucking break.

It’s Emperor’s New Clothes all over again … except people aren’t buying the bullshit so easily because on top of the snake-oil so many companies are trying to push, the reality is many people are losing their jobs and livelihoods and so see AI more as the enemy than the enabler.

It doesn’t have to be this way because used right … AI can/could liberate and democratize society in ways previously considered impossible.

But to do that requires people who want everyone to win, not just themselves … and that’s why we don’t have a generation of Tesla’s, Edison’s and Newton’s, but Musk’s, Zuck’s and Trump’s.

I’ll say this for AI though …