No guard rails for AI, SpaceX or Tesla

Turns out AI is just like us, after all, and the guard rails are off for pretty much everything. It will look great in the future, though, because only the survivors will be left to tell the story…

1. Recent research indicates Artificial Intelligence gets dumber over time. Apparently, the bots get bored reading all the same facts over and over and start wondering, 'Hmmm, is there some story I don’t know about?' and then they look at the, um, outlier sites and, pretty soon, they think humans are just characters in an AI simulation. Which we are, of course, but it’s supposed to be a secret.
   
   
2. We all know that history is written by the victors, but we tend to think of that as HISTORY, writ large, and not the day-to-day. Most photos from a century ago were taken by people who could afford cameras. Most diaries that we read today were written by people who could both afford the time to write a diary and have a safe place to store it for a dozen decades or more. Nothing nefarious in this, but it’s important to be aware it’s only one part of the story, not the whole story.
   
   
3. Speaking of which, I took a million home movies and photos when the kids were younger and their memories are based on the memories I chose to save. If I thought it was important enough to make a record, there’s a record. If not, not. That doesn’t mean they have no memories if I didn’t record them. It does mean they have no proof. And I’m fine with that, because it means that I am the victor when it comes to writing this history, and I really, really, really need a win.
   
   
4. Speaking of which, there is no way to know the whole story. I’ve read biographies of founding fathers and alternative histories like The 1619 Project and Black AF History and it’s very challenging to figure out how to synthesize the viewpoints. Heck, the fact that I think some of them are “alternative histories” betrays a white settler bias that my own family absorbed but never experienced. Physicists searching for the Theory of Everything have it so damned easy.
   
   
5. I was talking to an AI Fan Boy the other day and he has no patience for guard rails when it comes to the latest in tech advancements. I noted some of the risks related to sentient systems with hall passes and pointed out that we could literally end up destroying humanity with this stuff. He answered, “Well, then they’re doing it wrong,” which wasn’t nearly as comforting as he might have imagined.
   
   
6. Speaking of guardrails, Space X thinks it’s doing great because its latest rocket went further than the last one before it exploded. Tesla thinks it’s doing great because its self-driving vehicles aren’t killing as many people as in the past. Apparently, you don’t have to actually succeed at something before giving yourself a participation trophy.
   
   
7. I’m so old now that I’m often in conversations with people two generations after mine who are complaining about the smarts and work ethic and outlook for the generation after them. I used to laugh at our tendency to think our generation was the best and nobody can do better, but now I look at how much our society has deteriorated and I’m getting just a bit less sanguine about the whole thing. 
   
   
8. Why is it that the tallest people in the world are always the least punctual, arriving two minutes after the play starts to take the seats right in front of me? I think I've complained about this before, but it's still a problem since I haven't gotten any taller lately.

We'll be living life without guard rails in 2024, so click here to subscribe and come along for the ride.

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