Why don’t you let us write that piece for you? suggested Microsoft. Just give us an idea of what you want to say, and we will do the rest for you.
Out of curiosity, I agreed to that proposition and wrote two lines about what was bothering me. I then clicked on a little icon, and within a minute, I was offered a full page of well-worded recriminations.
It was very well-written indeed, with no errors whatsoever. Was I pleased? Heck no! The entity that laid that page has nothing to do with me. The draft sounded like it had been written by a “faux cul” lawyer. It was too formal to be credible.
But make no mistake. Artificial Intelligence is here to stay. Soon, it will be everywhere, to the delight of teenyboppers. They won’t have to learn multiplication tables anymore, and they won’t have to slave over some English essay either. Mighty AI will do the work for them. And kids are quick to jump at any new opportunity to play video games while AI is doing the thinking for them.
My refusal to submit to AI does mean that I am going to let my grudge against these pesky notices vanish. I want the authors to know that I am unhappy about these annoying notices. But I want to tell them with my own crude words. Complainers are usually angry, and an ultra polite-worded letter would not have the same effect as a hopping mad message.
I find AI useful but extremely dangerous. It will soon become an addiction, and like any addiction, it will be difficult to drop. We are on our way to becoming caricatures of ourselves, unable to think and reason by ourselves.
I have a nasty feeling that AI will be very popular with the White House and its new occupants, and this worries me a great deal. Can a machine, have feelings, like a dog? I doubt it very much. Feelings are becoming obsolete and unfashionable and will soon be banned by executive order.
Puppet masters will create algorithms to guide AI on the right path to keep us subservient to their whims. And in case of a catastrophe that will deprive us of our dependency on Artificial Intelligence, we will be like helpless mooing cows in a meadow.
Don’t follow blindly the directives given by the high priests of Technology. Keep a streak of independence and keep a wary eye on Big Brother.
Don’t become too dependent on Artificial Intelligence and keep your wits about this ever-obliging friend.
Alain