The WSJ and other media are filled with stories and predictions about the “AI revolution”. Some are utopian, some dystopian, some just weird and crazy. But all seem to have one glaring flaw .
That is the fact that AI – unlike life – is quite fragile. All the scenarios I have read assume that somehow things go on as now – lots of power, a connected grid, open communication, government power, social order, no electronic catastrophe (EMP blast, malware, whatever).
None of that is guaranteed, nor even likely .
I sense it as a lot like the advent of the internal combustion engine. Most dreamers saw it as a replacement for a horse. Some maybe understood it had advantages over steam. But nobody foresaw the social dynamics that ensued. Few even understood what it might do to transportation itself – for example to the road infrastructure .
Right now AI is free and exciting. But it can be easily wrecked. I’m not saying it will be, I’m not pretending I know what’s coming .
But I am sure it will be a lot different than what is currently predicted by both admirers and those who worry .
HuntingtonHarborThoughts 