Pressie has been pushing our students, government officials, the judiciary and all our institutions to take advantage of the AI revolution. This, while the world’s all agog over the claims and counterclaims about whether machines have now become sentient. Surely you haven’t been able to avoid the Artificial Intelligence “bot” (no more “ro-bot!) called ChatGPT? This question has been a science fiction staple for decades. Of recent, movies have offered graphic presentations of what’s gonna happen when they actually do. They go back at least to the 1930s but have you seen this year’s “Prometheus”?!! The first thing the bots will do – we’re assured – will be to take over the world and rule us under their jackboots!!
And why not? No matter how you slice it or dice it if the bots are being programmed like our human neural networks, isn’t that what we’d do if we had the wherewithal to do so?? Think Genghis Khan, thru Hitler and Mad Maduro!! The wherewithal would come from their superior ability “to go where no man has gone before” in the thinking department!! And this ain’t just about beating us at chess which was accomplished decades ago, but to “think” outside the box – the “box” of our brains!!
The bots are taught by an AI algorithm known as a “large language model”, or LLM. This uses “deep learning” and large data sets like millions of books and the entire Wikipedia to digest and generate new content. However, claims of machine sentience have been trenchantly challenged. There are doubts that the bots can actually go beyond the algorithms and come up with something entirely new!! But the old Turing test for sentience seems to’ve become obsolete: bots can now convince human interlocutors that they’re sentient hands down!!
Anyhow to save us from sentient machines the sci writer Isaac Asimov in the 1950’s had devised the three laws of robotics: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; they must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. And must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
But what’s gonna drive AI’s development is the motivator at the center of all present human activity – profits!! One analyst from Goldman Sachs justified massive spending in this field: “Over the next 10 years, AI could increase productivity by 1.5% per year. And that could increase S&P500 profits by 30% or more over the next decade.” Yep…money will make the new AI world go round!!
And even if we don’t want to, we’ll be taken (along) for the ride!!
…new political forms?
There’s a pattern in the evolution of political participation starting from autocracy – now in the news!! First, nobles flexed their muscle against the King; then the emerging bourgeoisie against the nobles and finally the commoners – against the bourgeoisie. The latter was a two-pronged attack in Guyana: workers first rising up for better conditions through riots and then formed trade unions.
Then the Trade Unions began Political Parties which duked it out to control the state’s political power. There was now a demarcation between their fields of activity: political parties vied for political power and Trade Unions agitated against employers for better working conditions and wages. In the present neo-liberal dispensation, labour’s been the one bearing the pressure for profits.
So you’d think the unions would be taking on employers something fierce, no?? Not in Guyana!! The TUC and members of several of its members like the GTU have chosen to become even more political than the Opposition parties!!
They wanna birth a replacement??
…new pedagogy
The famous founder of the largest ever psychiatrist school, Karl Menninger once noted “What the teacher is, is more important than what he teaches.” In Guyana, with all the talk about AI, successful teachers will be those who use it to create better citizens.
