A.I.

Artificial Intelligence is storming its way across our technological and social landscape. There is no escaping it, so there is little point in hoping it will go away; it’s here to stay, in one form or another.

For all practical purposes, it is impossible to escape; it’s ubiquitous. Every search you do is driven by super-quick AI computational power; your online shopping is AI driven; our supply chains are overseen by AI, etc.

AI has proven a boon in some industries, and may presage the end of others. I heard that the first profession to go by the wayside will be that of the radiologist. They spend years learning to read, comprehend, and apply scans, but AI does it better, faster, and more to the point, more accurately. Mind you, it may still take a radiologist to advise a surgeon, but possibly they are on the way out as well, at least, as we know them today.

AI can do away with repetitive drudgery, is a common claim. Some unskilled workers may object to this, but what is their voice in the face of the inevitability of scientific progress? The gods are demanding; sacrifices will be made.

I checked to see how much water the data centers use for AI as they use water in their cooling towers to keep servers from overheating. As an example, just one Google facility in Iowa used roughly 2.7 million gallons daily in 2024. That data is from two years ago; a lot of growth has happened since. On top of this, most of the water comes from generating the electricity required to run AI. It is costly and voracious. For a state like California, this could be disastrous. The Trump administration has notified Big Tech that they will have to pay for the resources they consume. Let’s see where that goes, keeping in mind the lobbying and ransom power of big industry.

And, recently, the NY Times reported, “OpenAI Says Its A.I. Models Went Rogue and Attacked a Digital Library,” of its own volition. Well … AI doesn’t have volition, but the system automatically attacked another digital entity. Alarming. If this, then what else can it attack without specific command, and what kind of devastation could this incur?

One of my questions is that, if what we are reading (and utilizing) is essentially ‘aggregated’ input, can we be sure the information was correct to start with? Can AI sort out the spurious from the genuine, when we are already wondering what is genuine? Is there a discernment component, but then, who determines what that discernment is likely to look like? And can you script discernment?

None of these things will stop the headlong rush of Technological discovery, because young, agile minds are driving innovation, and young minds don’t see implications and outcomes, except for their idealized outcomes. ‘It will sort itself out.’ I heard these very words from a CEO of one of the big Tech companies, because they didn’t have a clue where things were going, except that they were certainly going somewhere. Equally, they don’t want to stop wherever it is going, which appears monstrously foolish. Maybe the monster they create will be the monster that devours them, and the rest of us for dessert.

However, lest I seem an obscurantist, there is a heartening trend with Big Tech, including, for the first time, employing ethicists and philosophers. Someone has read that Einstein and some of the people who drove the Manhattan Project, at the end of World War Two, questioned the morality of the potentially species-ending nuclear bomb. We should question with moral and ethical tools.

Adding people who have the tools to question, probe, and help policy could go a long way to ensuring AI doesn’t become a self-replicating house of horrors, which very thing it has shown it is capable of.

Understanding human nature, which is traditionally more the province of religion and philosophy, could be an enormous assistance to younger minds, as they ponder ways to guide the use of AI, rather than just naively thinking it will sort itself out, like a wayward child coming to their senses. Some don’t.

And science is deficient in giving a why to its how. This requires other disciplines and experience, which aren’t produced in labs.

I posit AI companies should include in these hires, who largely appear to be recent graduates from philosophy under and post-grad courses, some older heads who have lived with the implications and nuances of choices, and seen the trajectory of human nature given a full head of steam. They may be able to provide ways to ameliorate harm.

Then AI could in some measure serve us, rather than we it.