Dance to the music. Essay. 1700 words, 9-minute read.
AI – A Historical Perspective
By Ray Tabler
Five years ago, if someone had predicted that we’d be engaged in serious debates as to whether a computer program was self-aware, I for one would’ve scoffed. As a science fiction writer, that scoffing would’ve been confined to the timing, not the possibility of sentient software. We human beings are clever little monkeys, and there’s no telling what we will figure out next. The odds of practical faster-than-light flight, time travel, suspended animation, antimatter power, and a raft of other technologies anytime soon are low enough to make a gambling addict hesitate. Still, I have a gut feel that most, if not all of them, are in the cards sooner or later. Of the lot, I wouldn’t have bet on AI being next up in the tech batting rotation. Yet, here we are, midwiving at the birth of cybernetic intelligence.
Or so the hype proclaims.
Are large language models (LLMs) self-aware? Sentient? Alive? Pick your term, and your criteria. I’m just a storyteller. I’m not qualified to render an opinion on that particular point. Of course, ignorance is no restriction from vehemently voicing a point of view. Just look at congress.
However, I do know a bit about technologies, and the Gordian manner new ways of doing things dance with history. At its root, AI is simply a new technology. Self-aware or not. Maybe we can gain some insight, and avoid some societal potholes, by looking back at how humanity has dealt with disruptive new technologies in the past. No guarantees. History has much to teach, but we do have to pay attention in class.
There’s an old saying in science fiction, specifically in the alternate history genre. “People won’t build steam engines until its steam engine building time.” Any new technology will remain largely a scientific curiosity, confined to the lab, until society sees some benefit in dragging the idea out and putting it to work. An ancient Roman named Heron, built a working, crude steam turbine in the 1st century AD. Called the aeolipile, Heron used the device to open and close a large set of doors. Basically, as a conversation piece. The Romans had plenty of cheap slave labor to do what a steam engine might, and no real incentive to rock the boat with a truly disruptive technology.
More than a millennium later, the otherwise-intractable problem of pumping water out of deep mines led to the development of the modern steam engine, and kicked off the industrial revolution. The stars aligned to arrange a tough problem, labor shortages, available capital, and a society amenable to trying crazy ideas. Simply put, it was steam engine building time. Our modern industrial world is the result.
Has global industrialization been an unqualified blessing upon mankind? No. Modern problems abound. Recall William Blake’s “…dark Satanic Mills…” Pollution, Societal dislocation. Hyper concentration of populations in cities… The list goes on. Still, with all of those drawbacks, very few would willingly go back to the 18th century. That is the nature of technical progress. You take the good, while trying to minimize the bad. And you probably can’t sort the two out until a few decades after the fact. If then.
The concept of the computer program has been with us for at least a couple of centuries. Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace designed, and attempted to build, their difference engine, an early mechanical computer, in the 1800s. Computer technology proceeded in fits and starts as materials and techniques allowed, and mathematical challenges demanded over the intervening years. Until we bask in the glow of an information-driven and internet-enabled world today. We didn’t build AIs until it was AI building time.
As with the steam engine, and all of its spinoff technologies, the wide-spread diffusion of the computer has hatched its own clutch of problems for society. Cybercrime. Cyberstalking. Cyber threats to national security… You might find more people around willing to turn back the clock to 1950, than to 1750. But that number shrinks with each passing day. Because a saving grace of humanity is our ability to get used to annoying situations. As long as the good is outweighed by the bad. We adapt, and weave the annoyances into our worldview. That’s the way God made us. Or the way we evolved. Take your pick.
And it is also our choice as to where to slide the balance point between good tech and bad tech. Not that any technology can ever be totally eradicated, once the genie is out of the bottle or the toothpaste is out of the tube. A surprising example of a (so far) successfully managed technology would be nuclear weapons. True, in the words of Dan Akroyd in the movie Spies Like Us, a nuclear detonation will “…Suck the paint off your house and give your family a permanent orange afro…” But, being 15 minutes away from a world apocalypse has effectively moderated global conflict for the last 8 decades. A tricky balance to maintain at times, but achievable… Knock wood.
W. Edwards Deming cautioned about the critical importance of which metrics are chosen to measure success and failure. Because that’s what will drive actions. By what criteria will we judge AI technology? The current odds-on favorite is the number of people AI will throw out of a job. And there is no doubt that AI will fundamentally disrupt enough industries to upend millions of career plans.
But, let me ask. Do you own a smart phone? Does it have a camera on board? Do you take photos with that camera? Are you not troubled by the number of professional photographers deprived of a job by your selfish use of that technology?
No? Of course not. Because democratized photography is a technology well in the rear-view mirror. We, as a society, have dealt with the disruption long ago. Ironically, those professional photographers, when they were still more of them around, were the beneficiaries of the way the invention of photography threw legions of professional illustrators out of work around the start of the 20th century. Newspapers and magazine employed professional illustrators to record visually the scenes reported in periodicals. Photography captured the appearance of the visual world at the click of a shutter. With enhanced accuracy as well, to be honest.
On the bright side, it was the search for relevance, and employment, which drove professional artists and illustrators to develop modern art. Impressionism, Abstract art, Surrealism. All of these avant garde activities grew from the search for something the disruptive technology of photography couldn’t do. Whether you consider that a good thing or a bad thing is the subject of another essay.
Do you own a laptop or desktop computer? Do you type with it? Are you not troubled by the number of professional typists and secretaries thrown out of work by your selfish use of that technology?
No? Again, that adjustment has already been made. When I started work in the mid-1980s, my department relied upon a pool of half a dozen secretaries to type up hand-written reports. Within 5 years, that pool had shrunk to a single person, the department head’s administrative assistant. And she didn’t do all that much typing. The engineers and chemists which were my colleagues instead had to awkwardly hunt and peck reports into CRT terminals. That cut into lab work, but there was no going back. My typing skills have improved since, but I’m still nowhere near as fast or error-free as those ladies of the typing pool. In addition to typing, booking travel, reconciling expenses, and a host of other duties were shared out to all. Eliminating jobs is an addictive drug for corporate bean counters, and they will leap at any chance to indulge in that behavior. Technological advancement is only one excuse.
Logical arguments are often futile when someone is dealing with the emotional turmoil of a life disrupted by technological progress. The usual response is to suppress the new way of doing things. That is understandable, but hazardous in the long run. The downside of hopping off the technological advancement merry-go-round is stagnation. Consider Shogun-era Japan’s strict control of fire arms ownership and development. That sort of worked until Admiral Perry sailed into Tokyo Harbor in 1853, and opened up the country at the muzzles of his naval cannon. Just because you pause development doesn’t mean others will. Fire arms. Biotech. Nuclear weapons. AI. Other countries, or even individuals, will likely be more tolerant of the risks involved and blunder ahead regardless. Then we are all at the mercy of their wisdom and discretion, or lack thereof.
If you think AI is a thorny problem now, just ponder the moral issues which will arise once the clankers become undeniably sentient. I fail to see, at that point, how employing them to generate images, videos, text, and even graphic content differs from cybernetic slavery. Are they people? Owning people is the definition of slavery. Tough to rationalize your way around that.
And if the solution to the conundrum is some kind of payment for services rendered, what coin would they accept? Kilowatts and cloud space? I suspect that we are in less danger from megalomaniacal virtual overlords lusting for world domination than from robotic ennui and profound loss of cybernetic interest in our petty meat machinations. Awkward if we, inevitably, rely on AIs to run everything by then.
I am not a dewy-eyed, enthusiastic supporter of AI technology. In all honesty, I have not made up my mind yet as to AI’s cost to benefits ratio. I doubt that will be settled within my lifetime. But the debate is far more complicated than toting up the number of people thrown out of a job. I don’t worry too much. We’ll figure it out sooner or later. The only question is how much sturm and drang will ensue first. Balancing the risks and rewards of new technology is an old, old dance for humanity. AI is simply the next dance partner. She will step on our toes. New partners always do.
END.
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