I’m not there yet…

I want to like artificial intelligence. I was an early adopter of things like the Blackberry and iPhone, tablet computers, and Blu-ray disks. Getting my hands on new tech was thrilling. I’d be lying if I said I haven’t toned that down considerably. I still like having neat new hardware, but tech like Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT) and the raft of other AI platforms feels somewhere between overwhelming and terrifying.

Technology is advancing at an unprecedented pace. Innovations are not only frequent but also increasingly complex. GPT, for example, is built on sophisticated machine learning models that can generate human-like text. This level of complexity can be daunting, even for those who have always embraced new technologies. The rapid pace means there’s less time to acclimate and understand each new development.

Earlier technologies, though innovative, were often more transparent and easier to understand. In contrast, many modern AI systems, including GPT, operate as “black boxes.” Their decision-making processes are opaque, making it difficult to comprehend how they work or predict their behavior. It’s a classic example of AI being asked a question, something magic happening, and the system spitting out an answer on the other side. 

Throw in a healthy dose of skepticism about how easy these systems will be to control or how well privacy is being protected and I feel like I’m increasingly in danger of turning into the old man standing in his front yard shaking his fist at a cloud. Maybe I’ve just finally gotten old enough that I’ll never be entirely comfortable again in a world so deeply different than the one I was born into. I want to like this stuff. It’s fascinating and I expect it’s fully going to run the world in the future… but every time I fiddle with it, I’m left feeling just a bit uneasy.

I really do want to like AI. I think it’s clearly the next stage of our technological development. I want to like it, but I’m just not there yet.