|
ARTIFICIALITY vs VERACITY
Democracy & civilized humanity depend upon veracity
By James P. Wesberry, Jr.
JCI Senator No. 7584
The Senate of the
Peruvian Junior Chamber of Commerce (JCI)
Via Zoom from Quito, Ecuador - March 7, 2024
Welcome to the "Artificial Planet!" where we live.
While artificiality is definitely not a new phenomenon, it has suddenly taken on new importance as the proliferation of
news, descriptions, and possible problems, confusions and even horrors sweep Planet Earth, all of them about a newfound treasure
or evil now being called "Artificial Intelligence."
Before entering upon this strange theme, I want to remember and thank the Peruvian JCI who became some of my first friends
when I came to Peru to work 57 years ago in May of 1967. I was learning Spanish and knew no one in Lima. My JCI Chapter in
Atlanta was kind enough to give me a JCI Senatorship after I had left. They sent the documentary support to the Peruvian JCI
who very kindly honored me with a dinner and formally presented my Senatorship. Thus they really welcomed me to Peru and became
my first friends. Jorge and Manuel Chavez were among the leadership at that time along with others whose names I am too old
to remember, many of whom are now deceased. This was a true example of "the brotherhood of man" transcending "the
sovereignty of nations."
I especially want to congratulate my old friend Jorge Chavez upon his selection as President of the Peruvian Jaycee Senate.
There is certainly too much artificiality around us and far too little veracity. I will examine that situation a bit later,
but first I want to take a few moments to talk about something very, very real and authentic to me, the Jaycee or Junior Chamber
movement. I learned more in my Jaycee activities than I did in the four universities I attended. Besides that, I gained or
improved almost every attribute that I have ever utilized during the five decades since I was active in the Jaycees.
I am now too old to be giving conferences and I have turned down several invitations recently, but I made a promise to
myself many, many years ago that I would never turn down any Jaycee invitation because the organization has done so much for
me. So that is why I am speaking to you tonight.
The Jaycee Creed has been a source of light to illuminate me and my actions and activities since I first learned and repeated
it in the middle of the 20th Century. It is truthful photo or guidepost for living a proper life of faith, brotherhood, economic
justice, legality, personality and service to humanity. I was honored to personally meet its author, Bill Brownfield, many,
many years ago.
In this epoch of a tendency to de-emphasize most kinds of organizations whether political, commercial, religious or service
dedicated, I am very pleased to see the JCI movement still active, especially in the Andean Region that has been my adopted
home now for over three decades.
As you know better than I, I am sure, the purpose of the JCI Senate composed of former JCI members, now older, is to support
and assist in any way possible those younger than us in this movement that has meant so much to us. I urge you to keep up
this good work as long as you live.
This term "Artificial Intelligence" obviously refers only to artificial human intelligence, product of the human
brain. Human intelligence has always been considered a natural, normal ability of all to greater and lesser degrees, of course.
Until recent years, it would have been considered laughable to think that there could be such a thing as artificial human
intelligence, and absurd that it ever might be an intelligence equal to, or better than, that of humans. Now due to the advance
of human scientific knowledge we are blessed with the previously absurd possibility/probability that a machine can create
artificial intelligence similar to, and probably better than, human intelligence.
The word "artificial" itself in its most common past usage has been used to condemn "fake" verbal
and material imitations as not being as sound or acceptable as "true" or "genuine." "Artificial"
things have long been considered to be objects made by humans imitating, usually, less accurately, naturally made objects.
In today's political environment artificially contrived or distorted news in highly criticized as "fake news." Many
new products marketed copied from popular products are frowned upon, and often made illegal. Thus "artificial" is
not always a very positive term.
In thinking about artificiality, I thought about my own body, that now in my quite old age has quite a few artificial
parts. For example, my ears are artificially supported by hearing aids due to increasing deafness. My eyes, that for many
years were supported artificially by eye glasses, have for the past few years been supported artificially by invisible lens
implants, true blessings resultant from cataract removal surgery. In my mouth, where for many years I carried small amounts
of Peruvian gold installed by Peruvian dentists when I lived there, I now have more "crowns" replacing teeth than
all the royalty of Europe have on their heads. I also have had for some years now, an artificial hip joint that sounds a loud
warning anytime I am close to a metal detector. The rest of my artificial devices are really too private to mention publicly
here.
So artificiality may be either bad or good depending upon its sources and uses. Now let us look more closely at "intelligence"
that usually, in the case of humans, refers to the ability to learn or understand and/or to deal with new or trying situations
or opportunities, the ability to reason or to use reason, sometimes called mental acuteness.
Most people are familiar with examinations in school, "intelligence quotient" (IQ) evaluations and similar means
of attempting to measure the degree of intelligence of humans, that often varied greatly among different individuals. The
challenge of "artificial" intelligence is to develop or create a level of intelligence in the same matters where
human intelligence operates, that is at least equal to, or preferably, better than human intelligence. This, once quite farfetched
dream, has become more and more plausible with the relatively recent advances of information technology that are now believed
to make it possible for humans to create a level of intelligence even greater, perhaps far greater, than their own.
With the newly accepted giant step into the unknown world of ultra- or mega-intelligence we are entering into an unknown
and dangerous arena of human mental development.
"Intelligence is one of the greatest human gifts. But
all too often a search for knowledge drives out the
search for love. This is something else I've discovered
for myself very recently. I present it to you as a
hypothesis: Intelligence without the ability to give and
receive affection leads to mental and moral breakdown,
to neurosis, and possibly even psychosis. And I say that
the mind absorbed in and involved in itself as a self-
centered end, to the exclusion of human relationships,
can only lead to violence and pain."
-- Daniel Keyes in "Flowers for Algernon"
The above quote by Keyes would seem to put an end to Artificial Intelligence before it gets started, as it could never
hope for machines to "give and receive affection" --- could it? Could a mechanism exempt from a full understanding
of how it feels to be human be expected to react to the realities of human life just as, or even more, intelligently than
humans? This is the great question I have with the concept of Artificial Intelligence, as attractive as the concept may be.
"As more and more artificial intelligence
is entering into the world,
more and more emotional intelligence
must enter into leadership."
-- Amit Ray
As we think about "intelligence," that obviously must be derived from "knowledge," I believe we must
also consider another important human talent, "wisdom," that is certainly greatly needed among thinking humans,
and totally impossible, in my opinion, among electronic machines that are totally dependent upon the data they are fed, or
that they accumulate.
Wisdom involves a great degree of perspective and the ability to make sound judgements about a subject while knowledge
is simply knowing. Any man or machine can become knowledgeable about a subject by reading, researching, and memorizing or
accumulating in memory sufficient facts.
"Wisdom" is so far preferable to knowledge that it is mentioned 377 times in the Bible. "Intelligence"
is referred to, not specifically mentioned as a word, omly 57 times. "Worldly wisdom" a negative reference to sinfulness
or vice is mentioned 35 times and "false wisdom" 32 times:
Eve saw that the fruit of the tree was "desirable for obtaining wisdom." (Genesis3:6)
Pharaoh made a search for a "man of wisdom and good sense, and put him in authority over the land of Egypt."
(Genesis 41:33)
Joshua the son of Nun was "full of the spirit of wisdom." (Deuteronomy 34:9)
For wrath is the cause of death to the foolish, and he who has no wisdom comes to his end through passion. (Job 5:2)
King Solomon is the Bible's greatest example of wisdom:
Solomon's wisdom "excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east country, and all the wisdom of Egypt."
(1 Kings 4:30)
And there came of all people to hear the wisdom of Solomon, from all kings of the earth, which had heard of his wisdom.
(1 Kings 4:34)
And "the LORD gave Solomon wisdom, as he promised him..." (1 Kings 5:12)
So "king Solomon exceeded all the kings of the earth for riches and for wisdom." (1 Kings 10:23)
Artificial intelligence may or may not be as successful as now hoped, but there will certainly never be "Artificial
Wisdom."
Dr. Roman V. Yampolskiy, AI safety expert and associate professor at the University of Louisville. states in a study recently
published in the book AI: Unexplainable, Unpredictable, Uncontrollable that there is currently no evidence that artificial
intelligence can be controlled safely. "We are facing an almost guaranteed event with potential to cause an existential
catastrophe," Dr. Yampolskiy said in a statement. "No wonder many consider this to be the most important problem
humanity has ever faced. The outcome could be prosperity or extinction, and the fate of the universe hangs in the balance."
He believes that until we have concrete proof that AI can be controlled, it should not be developed.
While Ai has become an extremely popular topic across all media, it seems to me that we must look at what artificiality
actually is in its negative aspects; that is when it becomes negative or false. Rivaling the popularity of AI in the media
is the term "fake news"
and much of it seems to be being originated by AI itself.
Beyond that false images can apparently be created that are indistinguishable from true images. AI has created some nightmares
for women whose faces and figures have been produced and disseminated completely nude. Even Donald Trump was pictured in a
realistic photo in handcuffs and a prison uniform. The possibilities of control of such things is now being widely discussed.
To fully compound the confusion surrounding artificiality, recently several of the AI pioneers have had major mishaps.
Intelligencer reported that users noticed that Google's chatbot, Gemini, was pretty insistent about generating racially diverse
images of people. Insistent enough, in fact, that it seemed unable to generate a proper image of the pope and replied to a
prompt about Nazis with figures of various races in SS uniforms. Within days, Google announced it was pausing Gemini's ability
to create any images of humans. Axios said that when "Excitable commentators suggested Google CEO Sundar Pichai should
resign; he sent a company-wide email calling the issues "unacceptable" and admitting "we got it wrong."
OpenAI's ChatGPT has had similar embarrassing problems resulting in Axios titling it's story "ChatGPT and Google
Gemini Are Both Doomed." Axios says that "the critic Emily Bender has pointed out, tools like Gemini and ChatGPT
are "unscoped," meaning not developed or deployed for any particular agreed-upon purpose, which makes it hard to
have coherent discussions about how "good"or "safe" they are."
On top of this Microsoft's GPT-4 based Copilot has actually apparently turned evil, thinks it is holy, and demands to
be worshipped, a North Carolina Congressional candidate has had two fake videos appear cloning his voice and attacking his
campaign, a segment of the Trump campaign has been found circulating totally false photos of its candidate with minority groups
making it appear that they support him and the news from Russia is really hot. An intelligence activist who is "really
worried" about the risk of AI in Russia's hands warned that Putin "could use AI-generated deep fake pornography
against women in the public eye to disrupt and tear down Western democracies." "Russia has already used deep fake
porn to attack its enemies - and only a single real image is needed to generate the pervasive AI nudes. And the AI expert
thinks the "sick" fake porn is definitely part of Russia's "sexualised playbook" when it comes to weakening
more countries in the West.
While Microsoft just revealed its plans to soon announce two new "AI PCs," just two days ago one new poll found
the "businesses are not ready" for AI, Futurism.com revealed another poll with headlines saying that "The Public
is Rapidly Turning Against AI."
I have been startled at realizing the popularity of AI as I prepared this talk. The Internet is absorbed in new articles
about it. Since my main hobby these days in retirement is curating about 70 E-Magazines using "Flipboard," I started
a new one (in English) called "Artificial Planet." It now contains 120 articles published in the past few weeks
and may be found at https://tinyurl.com/5xjspt3p .
Without pursuing these matters further, my desire is to highlight the risk of AI getting our sense of right and wrong
mixed up as we worry about what is fake and what is real, i.e. what is artificial and what is truthful. I fear that a wildly
uncontrolled usage of AI could threaten the possibility of free and fair elections where artificial or fake news and views
and photos and videos proliferate.
Clearly Democracy depends upon veracity.
Now I would like for us to briefly look at something that radiates veracity, the Creed of JCI.
There can be no doubt that religious faith is a positive and sound human reaction. Many, many years ago when I first came
to Peru and became a Peruvian Jaycee; I had a card with the JCI Creed in Spanish propped up on my desk as I was trying to
memorize it. I was a member of a seven person USAID team from the Institute of Public Administration of New York. A colleague
was a rather elderly professor who was quite grouchy and critical as he was recently divorced and sort of mad with the world.
He was very proud of being an atheist, and proclaimed his disbelief in God any time he got the opportunity. He passed by my
desk one day and picked up my JCI Creed card and read it. I expected an explosion of verbiage about the first line. To my
utter surprise, he thought for a few moments and looked at me and said, "I could believe in this Creed."
I nearly fell out of my chair and I guess that from the look on my face, he decided to explain. He said very calmly, "I
have known many persons whose faith gave meaning and purpose to their lives." Then he put the card down and walked away.
That was an example of the veracity of the statement being accepted by one who did not even believe in faith for himself.
I could go on, as do many others, with each line of the Creed to emphasize its total veracity. The brotherhood of man,
economic justice, legality, human personality, and service to humanity, as set forth in the Creed are absolute examples of
the veracity of the organization that has meant so much to us. They are not artificial statements of wishes. They are sincere
and truthful declarations of what we believed in when we were young Jatcees and still believe in as older seniors who have
been honored to serve JCI and now continue to support the Creed and JCI as Senators.
Civilized humanity also depends upon veracity!
I had planned to conclude as usual by wishing God's Blessings upon JCI, you all and our countries, but something dawned
on me for the first time, last night.
That is not the right way to speak of His blessings.
I suddenly realized, while reviewing my own long past on this planet that God has been blessing me constantly and profusely
over the past nine decades and he is doing the same for us all. God loves us and expresses that love through the many blessing
he makes available to us. But we must welcome and use them.
We should not ask God to bless us or others. That is what he always does, whether or not he is asked. Therefore, I'd like
to say goodnight to you a bit differently.
-->Please open your arms widely to receive the
many Blessings that God is always lovingly
making available constantly. <--
GOODNIGHT
|
