When Reality And Artificial Intelligence Collide - Who To Believe?

I went for a run yesterday morning - it was sunny and humid. As I left my house, I felt drops of water on my body - I ignored them, thinking they would go away, but as I covered a block, I started noticing wet splotches on the ground as well. So, I ran back to my house and did the thing I usually do. I called my husband and asked him if it is forecasted to rain, while I am getting wet from the rain. He confirmed that rain won’t come until the afternoon, and his advice based on the phone was to go for a run. I eventually did go for a run, the rain stopped, and I came back sweaty as ever.

Each human being is unique, unprecedented, unrepeatable.

This made me wonder - if there will come a time when, even though I can feel the raindrops on my arms, I still look to the phone to confirm if it is raining. In this case, it is physical evidence, so it is hard to ignore, but what about information things which are not as tangible. Will we ever live in a world where AI - Artificial Intelligence is the all-knowing god and we listen to it despite our own natural intelligence? In the current period, we have a generation that has lived without AI and knows how to navigate without it. We can verify whether AI is spouting nonsense or is making sense, although it is getting harder, but it is doable. I am capable of challenging AI because I know the subject matter enough, or I have done enough logical and critical thinking to know that. For instance, I needed to put down shelf liners for my kitchen cabinets and got the measurements and asked AI to figure out what size rolls would be good. AI, being the ever-so-helpful entity it is, suggests that I should also get a heavy-duty knife, ruler and a piece of parchment paper where I can make templates before cutting the liner itself. - If I have put shelf paper down, I can do it without making measurements on the parchment paper first. Now, I have put down enough shelf liners to know how this works, so I ignored it and took what made sense to me and went about my task.

But imagine - if you have never done that before? What if you have never laid down shelf liners, and you go to AI? How would you even know what to question? Let’s explore this a bit more. One can argue that once you go through the exercise, you might realise it is not needed - but is that true? Maybe for the next generation, they will rely on AI so much that they will be more prone to following instructions than using judgment. Another argument could be that you could use robots to put down the shelf liner for you. Yes, but in that case, are we losing touch with mundane tasks that keep our critical thinking and motor skills up to date?

Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.

Well, I guess my mom could make the same argument about making Spices from scratch vs buying them in the store or online. So, the people making the spices for the stores know how to make them, so at least the knowledge is preserved. In the case of AI, it has the knowledge trained on all that knowledge, which it can regurgitate, but will it ever evolve so that it can come up with a new recipe for a spice mix?

That is the crux of it - innovation, creativity, new thoughts and tangible items like physical activity, emotions can never be felt by AI unless it gains consciousness, which who knows might happen. Until then, we as humankind have to evolve to consciously learn and remember that AI is a tool and not an omniscient presence, at least not right now.

What is your relation with AI right now?