Facts, interpretation, the AI "trough of disappointment"--and why humans matter...

Not too long ago I posted that AI was, in fact, based at least partially on theft--adding that it is over-hyped and implying that you simply can't count on it.

Not yet anyway.

For argument's sake (and not only) I'm going to hold to this, and note that the current generative AI stock bubble is indeed a bubble that is going to bring more pain than gain at least in the short term... but possibly no for the reasons that you might expect.

Obviously, I do expect to get fully blasted by the pro-AI crowd (or ignored as a retro-old guy who has no clue), but allow Yours Truly to throw his wrench into discussions where it is most obvious. For despite the arguments of the immense power that is essentially the greatest attribute of generative AI, not to mention the need for democracies to remain at the forefront if only for security and military needs, generative AI has one incredibly obvious and troubling issue that should worry us all.

No matter what we might be led to believe, AI has no parents. This means more than most might want to believe. Children with no parents are thrown into a chaotic world. They are less likely to be stable, less likely to have empathy, express sympathy or have a moral code. In fact, (and obviously from a true layman's perspective) Yours Truly would argue that "sentience" possibly should be divided into two categories. Sure, my dog is sentient. Hitler was sentient. But useful sentience includes more than just awareness, but also attributes that define what it is to be human, and this becomes far more difficult to achieve without at least some sort of mentor placing you on the right path.

Now before I get into the nuts and bolts (and why I am writing this from the point of view of an investigator), no, I am not saying that orphans are not sentient. I'm not saying that even your typical, absolute failure of a drug addict lacks sentience. Why? Because orphans, drug addicts, pets, etc., still have great difficulty avoiding at least some sort of "semi-parental" guidance. Some of that will be positive, some negative and some lacking, but the complete lack of such guidance means a complete lack of morality, a moral compass and even common sense.

That is basically the definition of a psychopath--and, I suspect, it is why so many supposed geniuses (and bloggers and influencer-types) openly worry that AI will wipe out the human race.

But now to the nuts and bolts. Just type "AI business over-hyped" into Google, and the headlines (and there will be surprisingly many) will range from the stock bubble (and AI's role in this) to quotes that generative AI is generally useless to Mark Cuban's statement that AI is all about power and the military (which should frighten us to the core) to the "trough of disappointment" quote in this link (skip down) in the Telegraph:  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/08/11/stock-market-tremors-early-warning-financial-crisis/

So why the negativity? (Including mine?) Why a stock bubble? Nobody is arguing against AI's potential to change the world, but let's consider just what lack of parenting really means here (and please allow me to address this from a due diligence perspective).

1) No parenting, again, means no morality. Note that I am not automatically using the word "evil," as this also  implies a kind of morality, which is also a form of sentience. Once again, Hitler was sentient. He was also enveloped and enveloped others in his own warped and murderous morality. Instead, in the new reality of AI it's far more pragmatically chaotic. It's grab and use and morph to your heart's content. This is not only theft, but it's theft based in an absolute lack of a moral compass of any kind (and if you have any doubts, again Google a bit on the subject of artists, graphic artists and AI... and read an weep, as... theft is still theft).

2) This theft includes the news. Of all types. Lawsuits and endless negotiations with news providers and AI companies have come from this same type of "generative theft" in that the news is taken and used (which is not quite the same as perused) and regurgitated without compensation (to the humans hard at work doing the gathering).

3) This is also creative theft in that what is gathered (or simply taken) can be morphed in whatever fashion a parent-less, direction-less AI chooses. The result can be frankly hilarious, but also disturbing accounts of past and present events. Type serious questions into a chat-style AI program, and while sometimes the interpretation is even-keel and acceptable, but also there his the risk of a combo of information overload, very questionable interpretation of past events (ranging from "politically correct" to frankly illogical) to... babble.

This should not be brushed off. Again, the word "psychopath" comes to mind, and here are a few examples: years ago I interviewed three jailed serial killers in a row. This was a project I abandoned, as I learned that--as a human--I simply did not have the stomach for it. But I've also interviewed child molesters (and dealt with more than one businessman who specialized in hostile takeovers). The similarities are worrying. There was never a shortage of facts. Debates were difficult, as said psychopaths had the almost autistic ability to remember and bombard with details at will--and morph the big picture (in their minds) into whatever they wanted, morality be damned. Now add this type of ability to the news, and, as human commenters have remarked, AI driven social media posts are highly likely to influence politics. Facts can be morphed or simply drowned in an bot-AI sea of myth. And, unfortunately, humans will still read and vote accordingly.

4) A fact that is being noted by the markets is that AI feeds on itself. The more generative AI generates, the more other AI engines are likely to pick this up and the more that is pumped back into the same equation, "regenerated" and then once again distributed. This self-feeding is not the road to a new renaissance. Far from it. There are now some critics who predict an implosion--in that AI in the context of the news may feed on itself and then drown the world in a product that... is all but useless.

5) The argument that AI will put humans out of jobs may be overblown, but it is happening. Journalists, editors, content providers, etc. have been hard hit. But here is the downside: so far I have not seen an AI engine at a press conference. Moreover, I have not seen an AI engine on the sidelines of a press conference, asking a VP hard questions or simply trying to understand the backbone of a business. Nor have I seen an AI engine in the back room of a bar digging up info regarding political connections, bribes, nepotism in hiring or really anything of the kind.

Combine this with the past 15 years of cuts to the media, and the landscape gets ugly indeed. Or let me put it this way: a decade ago in CEE a news search on almost any middle-sized company revealed remarkable amounts of news. This was true in large cities, medium cities and even in the provinces. Why? Because there were far more working journalists at that time. This included trade journalists who met with the heads of endless and sundry presidents, with bosses and even with one-man shows because news still made a little money (and the myth that journalists were just an expense had not quite become gospel). Now, a similar trawl will be much less fruitful, especially if a business is less than a decade old. Combine this with the AI factor, and nobody--neither layman nor due diligence investigator--should expect more actual news.  Of substance anyway. Yes, an AI-based generator may hit you with a sea of facts and figures, but don't expect more than the company line (if there is anything to report at all).

And if that is the case, don't expect anything you can trust.

True, all of the above may mean little, taking into account that this is just one investigator's opinion--and also taking into account that even the Mark Cuban-Elon Musk billionaire set has admitted that AI has become impossible to predict. But bearing that in mind, I am going to hold to the one truth that I do hope still cannot be denied:

Humans--actually living and breathing, sentient and born-from-even-failed-parents-humans--still matter.

In fact, they are all that matters.

Surely, we can all agree on that.

Preston Smith is a licensed investigator based in Gdansk, Poland. He can be reached at query@cddi.pl.

Photo credit: ITU Pictures from Geneva, Switzerland, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.