2 weeks Ago
Have you wondered about artificial intelligence? The mystery wrapped around a logarithm. The beast of a zillion nano-tentacles squirming just below the surface of your electronic device. Michael Fanelli, of Elma, had a fun but inclusive encounter with AI.
I did. I read a cartload of books about it. Watched documentaries and Book TV on C-SPAN.
I even dived into Python, one of the AI programming languages. I can report to you that I still haven’t a clue, and neither do the scientists or the documentarians or Alexa or Siri or Aunt Clara, my personal AI assistant. One of the reasons AI remains elusive is its ever-changing nature.
Its first popular achievement was a computer program called Big Blue that defeated world chess champion Gary Kasperov in 1996. But the programming of Big Blue was designed specifically for chess. It was a memorizer not a learner.
Modern AI is all about what they call “deep learning.” With almost limitless computing power, it reads and analyses everything on the internet. AI looks for patterns that can be translated into uses, like predicting the chemical formulas for new disease-fighting drugs.
Does practical application mean understanding? Recognizing patterns is a defining human characteristic. Take the metaphor, “The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,” written by Alfred Noyes in “The Highwayman.” Can AI make that kind of connection between disparate elements (moon and ship) to convey human meaning? It is generally believed that today’s AI cannot “read” books other than formulaic mystery novels.
Perhaps I was looking in the wrong places to solve the mystery. Is AI nothing but a smoke screen for hiding its identity? Fortunately, I got help from a true friend of humanity — literature. Putting one word in front of the other — like walking.
I am artistic director of a local theater company called Buffalo Writers Theater and asked my members to write plays about AI. We produced a program of nine short AI-related plays performed by local actors in the back room of Rust Belt Books, entitled “The Singularity Strikes Back.” They dealt with AI from all angles (inside the beast and outside; cause and effect; enlightenment and admonition).
The stories varied widely. IA algorithms struggling with changes to their programming. A job interview of an unqualified job applicant with a sterling ChatGPT resume.
An AI dad trying to keep a family together after the real dad died. Two writers wrote dueling AI plays in which they questioned their own reality. “#Them, Too” dramatized a 12-step meeting of abused robots.
A lie-detector robot condemns his cheating spouse. Of course there was a play where AI threatens to shut down the power grid unless humans promise to serve it. My play was called, “Alexa: Write a Play Combining Fellini’s ‘8 1⁄2’ and the Movie ‘Adaptation’ w ith the Setting on the Moon.
” The consensus was that we know what AI does and not what it is. I imagine myself a Hittite visiting the Fourth Dynasty of Egypt in 2,600 BC, on my way to the bread shop. I pass the warehouses in the industrial park where they’re taking delivery of two-ton blocks.
What are those industrious Egyptians building? It must be pretty massive. In California, row after row of storage facilities for Nvidia supercomputers gleam in the sun, racking up gigawatts and gigabytes. Who knows what mega-structure it will build? I ask the great pyramid what it is as I stand at its base, squinting up at its unreachable apex.
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