by Dave Moore, CISSP
08/27/2023
There I was, two weeks ago, in sunny Las Vegas, attending my most unusual set of meetings yet: the annual artificial intelligence conference called AI4 2023.
Over 2,000 of the world’s top artificial intelligence (AI) brainiacs from 40 countries were gathered to see the latest products and share the latest research and news from AI scientists, business wonks, experimenters, government spooks, warfighting experts and wide-eyed wannabe millionaires. The conference was a roller-coaster of great enjoyment, deep fascination and dark apprehension as I witnessed the current state of everything AI.
I had been preparing for my AI conference visit for some time. My first adventures with AI were at robotics workshops taught by NASA roboticist Dr. David P. Miller, and then attending American Association for Artificial Intelligence conferences as part of the annual Botball competitions in 2000 and 2001. In 2023, as part of the continuing education requirements to maintain my CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional) certification, I took two AI courses, one of them titled, “When Ethics Meets Artificial Intelligence.”
Those things by no means make me an AI expert; however, I didn’t just fall off the AI turnip truck, either, so I can usually skip the basics and jump right into the murky morass that churns and bubbles in 2023 under the name, “Artificial Intelligence.” Do the AI experts really understand what the heck is going on? From what I saw at the AI4 2023 conference, the answer is, well, yes and no. Maybe, sometimes. Definitely, but there are exceptions. It depends on your definition of the word “understand.”
Keep in mind that artificial intelligence is called “artificial” for a reason. It is a “simulation” of human intelligence, an imitation, if you will, a facsimile. This is why preeminent theoretical physicists like Michio Kaku, last week in a CNN interview, called AI “a glorified tape recorder.” “It takes snippets of what’s on the web created by a human, splices them together and passes it off as if it created these things,” Kaku said. “And people are saying, ‘Oh my God, it’s a human, it’s humanlike.'”
Similarly, the father of modern linguistics and trailblazer in cognitive science Noam Chomsky, at the 2022 WebSummit, called AI, “autocomplete on steroids,” and said AI is, “basically just a way of wasting a lot of the energy in California.”
In my two recent Transcript columns titled, “Microsoft’s Bing robot is a ticking time bomb (2-26-23),” and “AI robots go to court (6-25-23),” I noted how General Paul Selva, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff warned Congress we might “unleash on humanity a set of robots that we don’t know how to control.” I also discussed how Google CEO Sundar Pichai admitted nobody really understands how Google’s new AI named “Bard” works. It’s an aspect “we call… a ‘black box.’ You know, you don’t fully understand.”
When people like that speak, I pay attention. Statements like those, from serious super-scientist experts, give me pause. Who am I to say they don’t know what they’re talking about?
In spite of the down side, there is an unstoppable AI “gold rush” going on, and nowhere was this more apparent than at the AI4 2023 conference. There are good things AI can accomplish, and the giddy AI gold rush prospectors were out in full force. Medicine, climate change and deep data analysis can all benefit from a good dose of accurate AI, but the main mantra being chanted was, “More! Faster! Less work! More money!”
It all remains a giant experiment, though, because there are still too many situations where AI, especially “generative” AI, cannot be trusted to handle things all alone. AI: not ready for prime time. Next week: my adventures at Defcon’s government-sanctioned “AI Village.”
Want to learn how to be safe on the Internet? Have I got a deal for you: come to the Norman Public Library Central Location September 20, 2023, at 6:30pm and take my one-night class, “Fight The Internet Bad Guys & Win!” Free and open to all ages, visit pioneer.libnet.info/event/8770968 or call 405-701-2600 to register and learn more. Sponsored by Josh Nelson Allstate Insurance, McClain Bank and the Norman Transcript.
Dave Moore, CISSP, has been fixing computers in Oklahoma since 1984. Founder of the non-profit Internet Safety Group Ltd, he also teaches Internet safety community training workshops. He can be reached at 405-919-9901 or www.internetsafetygroup.org