Let’s talk A.I.?
When I was a little kid, I had a couple of good friends. Andrej and Gregor, brothers. I spent most of my time with Andrej, very much less so with Gregor. For no particular reason, maybe just age. The three of us shared one passion, computers. We would hang out at their house, and play with computers.
One day, Gregor, showed me something on the computer, which caught my attention. I wasn’t really sure what it was at that moment, so I asked. Gregor replied: “You idiot, this is Artificial Intelligence.”
He had an algorithm going on, predicting moves. I didn’t understand at the time, really, what was happening on the screen. But funny story:
Very recently, I woke up due to a thunderstorm. A powerful one. One of those stormy nights that you feel the building shake. Just the moment before I woke up, the image of what Gregor was showing me decades ago, popped into my mind. It was at that moment that I understood computer vision. (I tend to remember images, temperature and smells more than documents / numbers).
What he was showing me was the Linear Regression algorithm in action. On a PC-386 (Could have been an 486)! I saw it clearly! But didn’t understand at that time! Now I do!
I belive Gregor is working on some kick ass AI stuff somewhere. I hope he’s fine, because it has been decades since I’v heard of him.
What is A.I.?
The story above is there just to say, that AI is not a new thing, it’s actually very old. And that is to suffice that one shouldn’t fear it. It’s been ages that AI is in the making. AI is nothing more than AN (Jeremy Clarkson approach) series of algorithms, that recognize patterns that us humans (perhaps?) can’t really see on the spot. Or even more, a series of virtual neurons that have some capabilities of learning / understanding, and be guided by input.
To visually explain what AI is, here is a picture:
AI is like an olive tree, a tree that grows with minimal resources. And grows slowly for a long time. Season after season, pushing the leaves out (Embeddings, sub-models, variations, Loras, etc…).
But wait a moment! What’s the beast behind the olive tree?
Choice:
- My dog.
- Something dangerous lurking behind the olive tree (AI)
So what is that “dangerous thing” behind the olive tree? Is it a natural danger?
So it’s really up to you how you see things. You can see it as a doggo, or something dangerous lurking behind.
And I do understand, when you go about and suddenly see a dog running about, perhaps it’s natural to feel endangered ? But my question is: Is there a need to feel endangered?
My (personal) opinion (when it comes to AI) is: No.
Here is my thinking:
- You are somewhere, a dog appears (AI), how do you justify the fact that you are endangered ? (Maybe the dog is dangerous, maybe the dog is not dangerous). How can you know?
- You are somewhere, a fire or a dangerous situation happens. How do you evaluate the amount of danger you are in ?
- You are at home, and you feel like listening to some music. You open your favorite music app. And a cool tune slides in. That’s AI. Do you feel you are in danger ?
A.I is the fear of the unknown
A.I. (unfortunately) brings out in us, the fear of the unknown. It’s like that feeling when you are in the airplane for the first time and the flying bird keeps accelerating, and accelerating and going…
That’s all that it is. After taking a couple of flights, the fear goes away. Why does the fear go away ? Because us, humans, have a tendency to classify things. Once we get used to something, our fear levels drop. We just don’t consider it dangerous it anymore. Well, we don’t “feel” it dangerous anymore. So it’s a systematic adaptation to a situation.
Conclusion
Like anything that we have to face in our daily life: Face your fears. Explore it, read about it, experiment. I am pretty sure that A.I. will turn into a cute little puppy at the end of your exploration. Very much like this one. (The very same dog you saw behind the olive tree, except in this picture, she was very little)
