People have imagined that world will be taken over by AI for quite some time. It is often depicted as AI running manufacturing processes and killing or enslaving people. Such imagery is only natural. Humans are visceral. Boy. We have bodies and bodies influence the way we think so much that there’s even a book by Lakoff and Johnson called Metaphors we live by It’s about how bodily experience has influenced our language in profound ways. Of course our imagination of AI takeover is going to look like something related to the things we do and think about! AI will replace us in what we do. You will no longer make love to your wife. AI will take your place ;).
There’s some TI-hüpe (“AI jump”) program in Estonia where some of my colleagues and a friend work on how to adapt AI to schools so that to make it somewhat useful to education. I’ve heard fractions of snippets here and there, most of it being sort of secret, and most of our conversations have revolved around how little effort students put into their schoolwork today by using AI so the endeavor sounds a bit futile.
Effort is one of the key components in actual learning. Humans, even tiny babies are hardwired for exerting effort. If you’ve ever done something hard and finished that, you know the joy you felt at the end. Effortless joys are rarely as pleasant. I’m sure any tantra guru has tried to convince you in that.
I have climbed mountains but also taken a ride up a mountain. After having hitched a ride the whole experience of being up there was sort of boring. Every time I’ve worked my way up, I’ve actually felt immense joy from being up there. So it hit me recently. The way AI takes over the world is not by running our machines or by killing us directly. It will take over our cognition. It already has for many people. And it’s a rule for our brains that once human brain stops exerting effort, it starts decaying, breaking apart.
It’s effort that keeps us sharp. Without effortful thinking we will lose our thinking abilities.
It’s is dangerous to let a probabilistic tool do planning and deciding for humans. It is commonly spoken about by now that human brains also work on probabilistic terms. But it is less common to know that this is not the only way. Our brain also – each their own – has a clear specific structure. And that physical structure also limits our understanding of the world. Structures enable and disable functions that a system can have. AI being largely (fix me if I’m wrong) probabilistic and absolutely not structure-bound, is able to create without prompting images or texts that have no resemblance to the real world, because the structure is off. Feet for hands? Two or three faucets to one sink? Stairs that lead nowhere? I could go on.
(yes that model itself has some structure I cannot ignore that fact, but it’s virtual and Language models have no link to physical experiences like most AIs don’t have info on lidar or radar scans or movement related to imagery unlike our brains).
So we will end up just barely skimming through AI written text and if it’s sort of fine we’ll accept it.
If it gives us sort of well sounding advice we will follow it. What’s the worst that could happen?
We end up not remembering facts about the world. These facts aren’t built into as-accurate-as-possible concepts. When we experience symptoms of impending disaster, we will not notice that the symptoms we’re seeing are signs to that mayhem. Exhibit A. What happens before a tsunami? The water in the sea retracts far away before it returns in a massive wave. People who are on the beach and know this will be able to notice it and run away. In 2004 when a large tsunami hit some islands near and around Indonesia and Thailand many people ran to the beach to look at what was going on. That behavior was their last. Some kid had just learned that tsunami fact in school and thanks to her, her family and the whole beach was evacuated and their lives spared.
Not everything can be offloaded to AI. Try letting it identify mushrooms and you’ll have Death Cap for dinner.
Knowledge means survival.
Mental Party 
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