Artificial Intelligence: Is it Good or Bad?

Hosts: Doug Sharp and Rich Geer

Doug and Rich speculates on whether or not artificial intelligence is good or bad.

The conversation began to explore the broader topic of AI's potential benefits and challenges. In a 1998 article by Daniel Graves about artificial intelligence and its implications on the RAE website, many of the benefits and problems are listed and still remain today. There is a fantasy about the triumph of reductionism: the doctrine that everything can ultimately be explained in terms of the lowest unit of nature: atoms and the forces of physics and chemistry.

Computer genius Alan Turing proposed a test to see if a machine's intelligence rivaled a human. Bring in an astute observer and with a human and a robot typing on a keyboard, the observer asks questions and if he can't tell which answers are coming from a robot, the AI is shown to be as intelligent as a human.

Doug shared his experience using Microsoft Word's co-pilot feature to add information to an article about the Michigan ghost town of Summitville, demonstrating how AI can pull from various sources to provide additional context and details. One result was finding the answer to an unsolved question about the death of a young man who wrote poetry and made wonderful drawings in the ledger.

Other examples showed that the AI could not understand emotion, illogical arguments or distinguish casual banter from the main topic.