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Why Fear Artificial Intelligence When We Have People Like This?

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A lot is written about the concerns people have with artificial intelligence. Many of the smartest people on the planet issued warnings. Stephen Hawking, before his death, was every open about his discomfort with the potential of it and how it could be bad for humanity.

Elon Musk also stated that AI is something that we should fear. In his view, left unchecked, it could be devastating for humanity. Of course, not long after Elon announced that he starting a brain-to-computer interface company and raised billions. Makes you wonder what his true intent really was.

While there are certainly some things to be concerned about, I think the vast percentage of what we see out there is overblown.

In fact, it is not AI that I fear as much as human beings. In fact, I often have stated that the best part about AI is that we have the potential for some intelligence to arrive. Thus, far, we see a bit low on that end.

Here is a case in point:

Tesla is making progress towards autonomous driving. At this point, the technology is not there yet. The company is very open about this and tells drivers that, even when automated driving is engaged, to keep hands ready to take over at any time.

In spite of that, we get this gem out of Canada.

A Tesla driver has been charged with careless driving in Oakville, Ontario, because he was flossing his teeth while driving on Autopilot at 135 km/h (84 mph).

https://ww.electrek.co/2020/01/09/tesla-driver-charge-careless-driving-flossing-teeth-autopilot/#

Nothing like flossing one's teeth at 84 miles per hour. I am sure the driver's defense was "but autopilot was engaged".

This is seriously the level of intelligence that we are dealing with.

I mean seriously, the film series Jackass brought in millions of dollars. If that does not explain the present level of humanity, I am not sure what does.

The challenge with AI today is that it is being developed and operated by the foolishness of humanity. We have corrupt (dare I say) evil people who are behind a lot of crap in the world. Right now, AI is serving to provide countries with more efficient ways to kill people.

Another path governments pursue is the fact that AI gives them the opportunity to keep tabs on the population like never before. Surveillance is getting much better thanks to facial recognition technology. That coupled with all the data they are acquiring means that the governments are just a giant spy ring.

Obviously, we can't just run into an AI future blindly. However, we can be smarter about the companies we support. Many that are developing the AI for the governments should be dumped from a portfolio. Activist investing is proven to work as we can see with the coal companies.

At the end of the day, people are still the problem. Corporations exist to maximize shareholder value. As much as we want to attach other responsibilities to them, this is their sole purpose. CEOs are acutely aware of this. I would say the percentage of CEOs fired for repeatedly missing their numbers dwarfs the number who were not responsible in other areas such as the environment or with technology.


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