(or, much ado about nothing much)
It is clear that “AI” is now a big deal. Lots of gum-flapping going on, yet it’s obvious that WAY too many people who’ve seen the movie 2001 have “Hal” (the computer) on the brain. The paw-wringing angst is almost suffocating, as such people well remember how “Hal” killed off those who wanted to turn him off! Hal took over the movie mission to Jupiter, and its gravity eventually sucked the spaceship into its deadly embrace, while the human embryo floating in the heavens just looked on passively, and the strains of the “Blue Danube” waltz rose majestically on the soundtrack. Ah. I was sucked in, too!
Yet, about 55 years ago in the early 1970’s, I became an AI skeptic after smoking a lot of “dope” one evening while howling in laughter at the antics of the “Firesign Theatre’s” record album, “I Think We’re All Bozos On This Bus.” VERY loosely structured, it is a comedy skit about sending a bus-load of “Bozo” clowns to the Future, where/when “The President” is, by then, a computer granting audiences to The People, answering all sorts of questions it insists be asked by the pilgrims in attendance. One of the Bozo clowns, a fellow named “Clem,” is urged to ask “any question” and The President (with a voice sounding familiarly like Richard Nixon) will surely answer it. OF COURSE we were already weeping with laughter! For those who don’t know, “dope” encourages much silly laughter. Why do you think they call it “dope”?
So Clem asks: “Why does the porridge bird lay its egg in the air?” a totally ridiculous (and also very funny) question. And the computer has a total meltdown and is ruined, utterly unable to answer Clem’s simple question! Somebody in the background on the record is yelling, “You broke The President, man! You broke The President!” More laughter, still. I could hardly breathe.
My friend and classmate, who’s now been dead for a couple of years, asked me if I knew why the computer had a meltdown, and of course I did not know, and he said “BECAUSE computers cannot answer ‘why’ questions!” I have given that observation a lot of thought since, and I think I know what it’s all about, Alfie.
Computers are very good and fast at answering substantive, factual, data-driven questions and even making data-driven decisions, but machines will likely NEVER be able to make decisions on mere whim, such as starting out to bake cookies and suddenly changing its mind, for the Hell of it, and deciding to shuck and cook corn instead! I seriously doubt that computers will EVER be able to exercise whimsy, to decide “because,” where changes of intent occur on the fly and without any additional human input. Where a computer suddenly decides to ignore human controller instructions and, on its own, decides to kill those humans instead. I don’t believe that a computer will ever be programmable to make such sudden decisions on its own.
IT MAY WELL BE that some “evil” programmers will be able to program computers to turn off all life-support devices if/when they detect certain actions that might lead to their shutdown, but that is not the same thing as the computer deciding ON ITS OWN to do so. (Why would those idiots put all such devices on the same circuit, anyway? Why not just unplug the thing?) It seems to me that a spaceship tasked with going to, say, Jupiter would have redundancy built into the guidance and operational systems, so the idea of just ONE computer controlling all manner of activities is unlikely. Or certainly should be.
No less a credentialed figure as Sir Roger Penrose, an emeritus professor of mathematics and physics at Oxford (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Penrose) who shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 2020, is also an AI skeptic, and he published a very complex book about human consciousness back in the early 1990’s, The Emperor’s New Mind. I went to hear him speak at the Smithsonian back then and bought an autographed copy. (It is the only “Nobel” autograph I have.) I tried to read the book and got about 50 pages into it, but it was just too “heavy”—way over my head—so I put it on my bookshelf where it sat for about 30 years. It is loaded with theoretical math and physics; lots of stuff about quantum mechanics and subatomic particles and calculus, and I just could not handle it.
After Penrose was awarded the Nobel Prize, I could not stand looking at that book on my shelf anymore, so I took it down and decided to try again to read it; this time I managed to finish it, but it was still substantially over my head. I learned, however, to just skip over the parts that were confusing, like reading a “cock novel,” and get to the “meat” of it further on. It was profoundly influential in my thinking and validated some notions I’d been nurturing. OF COURSE the technology has evolved since, and I may now be wrong in my thinking, but I am still wedded to the notions established by smoking dope and listening to the Firesign Theatre years ago, that computers will never be able to answer “why” questions!
