Musings of a Restless Mind

Why AI Because of All Its Faults Will Lead Us to a Better World

Because I have worked in AI and I am familiar with its inner workings, I have written a number of essays on AI and its uses and abuses. I have always been ambivalent about the utility of AI, urging people to use it as a tool rather than an authority. I have been neither a doom-sayer nor one who views AI as the pot of gold-pressed latinum at the end of the wormhole. Up until now I have been both a fan and someone wary of the ease of abuse of AI.

That changed today when I read Holly Mathnerd‘s essay explaining how to use AI properly. I have not changed any of my views on AI, but now I see it clearly for its full potential and what it is, humanity’s next great leap forward, because of its faults! Seriously, take a moment and read Holly’s little essay first. She simply and cleverly guides you through how to use AI to enhance your work. I beg of you, read her essay and use her advice. If you don’t, you will live to regret it.

Holly precisely and perfectly demonstrates that AI is Hogwart’s Mirror of Desire (technically the Mirror of Erised which is Desire spelled backwards because J. K. Rowling is clever like that). If you ask AI what you want to know, it will perfectly reflect that which you already believe and do it more persuasively than you can. Holly goes on to tell you how to avoid that trap and make AI work for you. Seriously, do what she says. What that caused me to realize, is that AI is not a new thing, just a perfect embodiment of every con-man and sociopath or lying politician who ever lived, and that is a good thing, a very good thing.

How can that be a good thing, you ask? I’ve never met a person who hasn’t been conned, or at the least, talked into foolishly buying something of no use. In our work life too, we constantly encounter sociopaths, gossips, and liars who work hard to get ahead by causing us to ruin our own lives or those of others from their deceit. Psychologists spend much of their time during therapy sessions explaining how sociopaths and con-men work to our detriment, but most of their advice falls on deaf ears. Why? Psychologists know why, because warning a child to not touch a hot stove rarely changes what they do, but allowing a child to touch a hot stove and briefly experience the searing pain sticks with that child for the rest of their life.

What AI is doing for young people in the world is showing them how con-men and sociopaths work and, almost always, leaving them with the distasteful consequences of allowing themselves to be flattered and duped into believing such lies. Just ask the lawyers who parroted imaginary case law that AI, oh so helpfully, cited for them. What I foresee is this happening to young people before the consequence is so great that it ruins their careers or their lives. Foolishly believe AI by allowing it to write your papers for you in college, and you’re likely to get smacked down hard before it ends your post-college career. At least I hope that’s how this will work out.

I believe we are at the dawning of a new age, an age when thoughtful discernment and reasoning can become widespread, and it’s all because of that horrible devil, AI that will burn us and make us take that lesson to heart.