Mind and muscles

At the cusp of the age of AI, we are to look ahead. Not right away, but slowly and surely, it will displace a lot of mundane tasks currently carried out by us at first.

With Federick Taylor, we’ve got the model T’s, “any color you want as long as it’s black”.

Then “the rain in Spain, stays mainly in the plain”. Generic AI. Repeat after me. Repeat after me.

Learning as we know, should be a process, slow, to bring out what’s already inside.

Yet we keep cramming it in. Rote learning. Passing the exam. IBM clones (not the PC’s, the salesman). Repeat after me. As long as it’s black. GIGO (garbage in g.o.).

No wonder we are worried machine would catch up and get smarter. Faster, yes (horsepower? the expression of the past when Western Union tried to deliver the newspaper). Data rich, yes. No emotions involved? yes. Efficient and energetic? yes, yes. Never sleep, never complain while consume a lot of energy to crunch numbers. Definitely.

No wonder Elon merged his companies, to explore space and abundance of solar energy up close to cut down the electricity bills, then sell some surplus to us.

Right now, data center reigns. Coders reigns. AI “advisors” recruited.

Once I was in the business of “outsourcing” the selling to partners and agents.

Now, the table turns. The machine is drawing out what’s left of us, our humanity, humor and fear of death.

Instead of “edu-care” (drawing out) we cram into the mind of pupil and the machine our newest one, the same way we harness the piston for torque (more muscles during the height of the Industrial Revolution) in hopes it becomes more like us e.g. our memories, preferences and prejudice.

Kudo to Michael Connelly in his latest installment of our Lincoln Lawyer (Mickey).

Up and down the California coast, during the fire, and the court case. AI is here. No if, or, and, but. It just is here.

Deal with it. Like a flat tire. Or an Altadena fire. Or a settlement out of court. There will be a lot of “testimony” from the archive, curated and compiled by a court near you.

After all, we have skipped the assembly line to go online. Amuse ourselves to death, now that TV sets are cheap, way cheap. When muscles and mind are no more. We also are no more.

While we sleep (to rest our muscles and mind), machine learning keeps on learning. Moore and Moore, Moore, Moore……till infinity dues us part (make sense? by definition, infinity is unreachable, hence, we’re together, forever). Inundated, yet never dated, we’re tied in a knot. Machine and me. No Marley. Un, deux, trois….Now that we are data-rich, are we happier? Today’s news announced that Google invested a lot in developing AI.

In ” The Proving Ground” after the Press Conference announcing case settlement (between AI alleged mishap and Brenda, the mother whose daughter was killed) Mr. Connelly wrote:

” she – Brenda – left…rich (fifty Mil) beyond her dreams, but inside hollow like a drum”.

What good for a man to own (or know a lot about) the whole world yet losing his soul. All muscles (including brain’s), but hollow like a drum, without a soul.

There is still something we human called Soul. At least that’s what I hope to have with me so I can linger to see AI infinitum development far out into space.