So I’m curious — we’re all here because we at least hate the current state of AI with hallucinating facts, being used to undress women and children, and all the fuckery that goes along with it.
I grew up watching Star Trek: The Next Generation, which takes place on a ship with a perfect AI that does everything right and basically does nothing wrong. It never hallucinates information; it’s always right. It has never been used to undress people against their will; however, the Holodeck is kind of an extension of that and was used for that on Deep Space Nine, when operated by a Ferengi (capitalist alien race in a world where humans are communist). But the Enterprise holodeck would never do that. The shipwide AI also does not traditionally carry on conversations. The one time it does, the human was hallucinating — sort of. The doctor was in a pocket universe, people were disappearing, and at one point the AI told her she was the only crew person on the Enterprise, and no, that did not make sense, but that that was still how it was. Because, in her pocket universe, it was true.
So the question is… would you want a perfect AI that was incapable of lying or harbouring anything untrue? Basically you could ask it anything and it would give you the correct answer.
The one fault I can find with that fictional AI is when Data (the android), dressed like Sherlock Holmes, asked the computer to “create an enemy which rivals my intelligence.” He meant to say Sherlock Holmes’s intelligence, who he was cosplaying, but the computer made a self-aware malicious AI that got out of the Holodeck and tried to destroy the ship… because it was told to do so. Other than that, though.
…I’m not trying to mislead anyone, so I will drop the other shoe, answer the begged question now. I’ve always felt that to get to that level of AI, we need to wade through the shit we’re in now. So yeah, before you ask, that’s kind of the point of the thought exercise. However, I will also say that I do not think we will get to Star Trek AI, I think we will get to Terminator AI, destroying the world rather than lifting people up. I think maybe in the Star Trek universe, AI didn’t really take off until people realised that war wasn’t the answer, after WW3/the Eugenics Wars, and so they were making AI to make things better, not worse. We are not in that timeline. I look at what is happening now, IRL, and the timeline in the Terminator franchise, and it’s clear to me that that one is more realistic.
That said, I still wonder if anyone would want AI if it did not have any of the problems.
I always find it odd when people defend Gen-AI by saying that it would be a force for good in a future communist utopia. It always reminds me of Christians saying the burdens of this life will be worth it when they find happiness in the afterlife. I’ve lived under capitalism all my life and my children will probably live under capitalism; We need to work out solutions for our messy imperfect world, instead of hoping that an all mighty utopia will do all the work for us.
Well, first of all I’m definitely not defending GenAI.
Second of all, the communist utopia was envisioned decades before AI was ever a problem in the real world. They didn’t even call it AI back then, they just cast someone as the voice of the computer. It’s best compared to AI, or a Virtual Assistant (like Siri), but really, it’s a person in a recording studio talking back to the characters. They never explained how it would work because they just expected by the 24th century, we’d have figured it out. They hoped that the best of us would be running things, not the worst of us.
To be fair, we still have a few centuries to go. Around this time in Star Trek canon, World War III was breaking out over eugenics — essentially, the rich were breeding their offspring to not only resist disease, but also to be stronger, smarter, quicker to think. This came up in the TOS (Original Series) episode “Space Seed,” and the movies “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” (considered by a lot of sci-fi fans to be one of the best films of the 1980s… but be warned, watching it means you kinda have to watch Star Trek III: The Search for Spock because of what happens at the end, and then what happens at the end of that leads into Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, another contender for best 80s movie. The first one isn’t necessary and is skippable) and Star Trek Into Darkness (sort of a soft remake of Wrath of Khan, albeit in an alternate timeline — not as good, but still, pretty good, especially with Dr Strange as Khan and a certain 80s action star as the actual bad guy, but definitely see Khan first).
Eek. Got off on a bit of a tangent there. I still feel somewhat hopeful for the future, despite so much evidence to the contrary. That’s what Trek is about, what being a Trekker is about. Having hope. Thinking things will get better. But we can do both — you can’t have meaningful actions without the inspiration of hope. The problem with (some!) Christians isn’t what you said though, it’s “I can be a dick and I’m saved and you’re not.” Ever drive by a church on Sunday when it’s letting out? Very hard to find a good Christian among them. Most of them will run you off the road and it’s fine because they’re saved and they just did their time at church so everyone else can die in a fire as long as they can get to brunch and show everyone how well dressed they are. They’ll spend an hour or more praising Jesus and singing the psalms and whatnot, but then they’ll run over a poor person to get their spot in line at the buffet. They’re so worried about what other people do, they forsake the very first of the Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt have no other god before me.” The god they put before the Christian god is themselves. It’s all about them and how people see them. They are their own golden calf. By “god” the Bible doesn’t actually mean an immortal deity. It means anything in your life. Which is why I couldn’t be a Christian. I put tech before god, I put Star Trek before god, I put anime before god… you will find very, very few Christians who actually understand the first commandment and are compliant to it.
But that’s a whole other problem. ;) I would say “don’t get me started on Christianity” but that ship kinda sailed and is now firing cannonballs…