These days, dozens of articles and opinions about fake news and accusations of fake news (two different things) are warning people to not accept things at face value because of this artificial intelligence thing. Marvin Gaye used to tell us to believe half of what we see and none of what we hear. Today he’d say believe none of what you see, hear, or read, and take nothing at face value.
Intelligence Is Real, Not Artificial
For those unfamiliar with digital history, Y2K was one of the great computer cons
People who were certain we were all doomed when the clock struck midnight on December 31, 1999 had children who now think A.I. is some mysterious invisible beast that will wipe out humanity. The reason for this remains a mystery to me. What do the robots get out of it? Some sort of cruel satisfaction? The power over earthlings? When all the humans have been eradicated, I guess the the robots will go after each other until the only one left is Hal. Sorry, Dave.
Artificial intelligence is a misnomer
Many of the people who are worried about A.I. believe that humans are doomed because software-driven machines will take over the world and destroy the entire human race. I wonder what the Robot Generals plan to do with the more than 8 billion of us.
As James Brown would say, “Let’s break it down”
Artificial
Artificial means contrived, and made as an imitation of something real. Artificial is for fingernails, eyelashes, cubic zirconia, things manufacturers put in our food, pleather, and flowers, but not for intelligence.
Intelligence
There is no settling the question, “What is intelligence?” because the word has too many definitions. Most people agree intelligence has something to do with thinking ability. For sure it’s not learning, which is acquiring and storing information that can be called upon when needed. Intelligence is also the ability to adapt to new situations.
Artists say intelligence is the ability to be creative
Eggheads say it’s the ability to think in the abstract, to reflect upon such intangible things as right and wrong, implications, significance, and the bigger picture. Abstract thinkers leave the everyday task of filling endless spreadsheet cells to those who are suited for that kind of work.
If you want to get deeply into defining intelligence, just head on over to your local college or university
Ask for directions to the Psychology Department. Get them into an argument about whether there are 2 types or 9 types or 12 types of intelligence.
Dividing an unmeasurable phenomenon into a bunch of ever-smaller pieces makes it possible for more psychologists to publish ever-more-excruciatingly-micro studies that almost no one reads or cares about. Add to that what we know about so many published studies being full of fakery and untruths, and it’s easy to see the best approach is to believe none of them.
Speaking of untruths
The pressure is always on research companies to do every study cheaper and deliver results faster. The studies I do now are faster than the fastest research companies and less expensive, too.
How can you do this, they ask, and maintain some sort of integrity?
I tell them I will be involved with no research that cheats. Instead I will cogitate on your issue of importance until I can render my Elder Statesman’s Well-Informed Armchair Opinion. That’s where I put together everything I’ve learned about customers, competition, and markets over the last 40 years and apply my hands-on-knowledge to help you answer your most pressing business questions. I also serve as The Objective Outsider, but that takes lots longer.
Not everyone is as upfront as that about how their work will be done
One company asked research vendors to bid on a study that would conduct interviews with 1,000 people. All contractors who submitted proposals and budgets bid on how much time and money it would take to conduct 1,000 interviews, of course. The research firm that won the contract with the lowest bid and fastest turnaround time cheated.
In secret, their staff interviewed only 500 people
Data entry clerks loaded those 500 responses into the computer. Then they entered all 500 again. Presto, 1,000 survey responses. No, the clients never found out they were getting skinned. Few ever do.
These days, some companies provide research even faster and cheaper by using robots to analyze the imagined responses produced by another group of robots that were pretending to be shoppers and buyers.
Seriously, no kidding
Research sponsors are spending a lot of money to have artificial people question artificial respondents and have artificial people prepare reports that provide artificial answers. How modern.
These days there’s even more shady stuff, because it’s almost all online and almost all of it uses overlapping databases of people willing to answer hundreds of dreary questions for money. The world of buying and selling research is worthy of a documentary (yes, I’d love to work on it with a reputable backer with bucks).
The best way to protect yourself against being manipulated?
Change your default mental mode from blindly trusting to taking a closer look before deciding for your self what’s real and what is not. Learn how to separate the wheat from the chaff and you’re far less likely to be scammed, cheated, and taken advantage of by corner-cutters and the unscrupulous.
Remind yourself that reputations for trustworthiness can only be earned over time
For example, I don’t know about you, but I trust medical advice from Johns Hopkins and the Mayo and Cleveland Clinics more than I trust that annoying guy who pitches his “secret poop cures” in those obnoxious YouTube ads that run before we get to see what we came there looking for.
One of the themes running through this river of articles, essays, how-tos, and columns I’ve written every week for the last nine years is how intelligent folks can learn see behind the curtain, below the surface, over the horizon, and around the corner by using their critical thinking skills when it really counts.
If you want something to worry about, worry about the skills, motives, morals, and standards of the people who are feeding these machines and of those who command their obedience.
