I’m a boomer who appreciates much of what technology offers. I’d much rather write in Microsoft Word than with a typewriter or pen and paper. The internet puts a wealth of knowledge at my fingertips, and cell phones, online banking, e-commerce and transcription software have all made life easier.
I bristle, though, when Meta AI wants to help me comment on a Facebook post or Google suggests responses to an email. “I can think for myself!” I’m tempted to retort – but to what or whom?
I know there’s more to artificial intelligence than intrusions like those, or the images the Coal Region Canary sometimes uses with this column. Advocates extol it as a valuable tool for performing monotonous tasks, sorting through mountains of data, helping us make all sorts of decisions and even providing companionship of a sort.
I can’t help wondering where this will leave us humans, but for now, the industry’s generating lots of enthusiasm and attracting boatloads of cash. Just last Tuesday, Donald Trump appeared at a Pittsburgh summit organized by GOP Sen. Dave McCormick to announce private investments of $36 billion for data centers in Pennsylvania.
Plus $56 billion in new energy infrastructure because those data centers scarf up massive amounts of electricity. In fact, they were the main reason for a sharp rise in wholesale prices in our regional power grid, according to a study by independent watchdog Monitoring Analytics.
Microsoft probably raised some eyebrows last year when it struck a 20-year deal to buy all the power generated by Three Mile Island’s Unit 1 nuclear reactor, which owner Constellation Energy is restarting after shutting it down in 2019 because of competition from cheap natural gas.
But please, let’s not forget the 1979 partial meltdown of TMI Unit 2, which scared the hell out of everyone and has never reopened.
Forgive me for fretting about what Trump called his “historic” executive orders to expedite nuclear power plant construction. He called the accelerated approval process “very safe,” but he also claimed his late uncle, MIT professor John Trump, had taught Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski – who never attended that school.
Trump also bragged about all the fossil fuel drilling his administration is greenlighting and how he has dismantled renewable energy incentives, apparently just because former President Joe Biden supported them – and science.
Assuming this anti-regulation White House even acknowledges the devastation of climate change, it might be expecting AI to fix it.
But AI carries its own set of threats.
Axios co-founders Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen reported in May that “scores of CEOs” across various industries are poised to dump human workers whenever AI proves it can do their jobs just as well. It could take six months to several years and wipe out millions of jobs, they wrote.
Without some sort of intervention, the result could be more poverty and an even greater concentration of wealth.
Two years ago, professors at Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering shared their views of AI.
Among their concerns were potential deception and fraud, which is especially scary when a fraudster and compulsive liar is leading our country.
Dylan Losey, who specializes in robotics, noted that AI is only as effective as the data it’s given. “In practice,” he said, “rushed applications of AI have resulted in systems with racial and gender biases.”
Computer scientist Eugenia Rho said she’s worried about ‘the potential erosion of genuine human connection … Will we, over time, prefer the consistent and tailored responses from (AI) over the unpredictable, messy, spontaneous, but genuine nature of human conversation?”
If that isn’t bad enough, Rho cited “the risk of diminishing critical thinking skills if users depend too heavily on AI-generated content without scrutiny.”
That’s why I try to do my own research, choose my own TV shows to stream and, above all, decide for myself how I want to communicate in emails and on social media.
For the idea of letting Google, Meta or who knows what else do my thinking for me is truly terrifying.
Lisa Von Ahn is an experienced columnist previously published in the Pottsville Republican Herald newspaper.
Canary note: Opinions expressed in any Op-Ed column appearing on this site are the views of the writer and are not necessarily the opinions of Coal Region Canary.
Want to be a columnist with Coal Region Canary? Contact us at newscanary@gmail.com.
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