technology

AI or ACS?

bill fryman, , , , , , , , 1 Comment

I want to start today’s post with a disclaimer. I am not a Luddite! (Some younger readers may need to look for that word in your online dictionary.) I have worked in the technology field for most of my adult life. I have seen many great things come from technological advances and have also seen times where there were flops or total failures. I do not dislike technology, but I do not love technology that has been created just for the sake of technology or technologists. Having said that, let us move along.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, I grew up in a small farming community. While my family did not own a farm, but like many other teenagers in my hometown, I worked on a farm during summers. I drove tractors, combines, trucks, etc. Some years I worked from planting season until harvest. When equipment broke or failed, I helped do repairs to get things working again.

I am amazed when I read about farming today. Tractors with six or eight drive wheels. Tractors with more onboard computers than we have in our offices. Tractors that drive themselves. Tractors that can’t be repaired without a service call by the dealer in a truck with even more computers but few actual tools and no mechanics. The world has left people like me behind in the dust.

But these advances come at a price. Farmers pay six figure prices for equipment that is used one or two weeks a year and for the other fifty weeks or so sits at the dealer awaiting repairs or sitting in an expensive storage shed on the farm. And then we, those who have no understanding of farming, complain about the high cost of food which we often waste.

You may wonder how this ties into the title of this post. I used abbreviations for the title because that seems to be a trend today. AI is artificial intelligence, the latest and greatest trend in information technology today. A method for us to have all knowledge at our fingertips without any understanding of this knowledge. ACS is a term I coined for the post. It is artificial common sense. It seems to me that intelligence is of little importance without the common sense related to the use of that knowledge and an understanding of the source of this knowledge.

A rather simplistic example of AI versus ACS can be found in these two statements. AI – “Fire is hot. You can get warm near fire.” ACS would add – “While fire is hot and you can get warm near fire, if you get too close you will get burned (or may be consumed by the fire).” Pretty simple, right?

A few days ago, I was rearranging one of my bookshelves and came across a book that I purchased and read in the 1980’s. It was a collection of some humorous articles by an outdoor writer, Patrick F. McManus, between 1968 and 1978. I decided to browse these articles to compare them to what we might see today. One especially stood out and I wanted to quote a short selection here.

McManus wrote, “One of these days they’ll probably come out with a mechanical bird dog that locates pheasants with a special scent detector and radar. A small on-dog computer will record and analyze all available information and give the hunter a report: two roosters and five hens in stubble field – 253 feet. A pointer on the dog’s back would indicate the exact direction…Since no self-respecting hunter would want to be seen carrying his dog around by a handle, all but the cheapest models would be designed to look like nifty attaché cases…”

While this was humorous when originally written, it almost seems like a credible concept today. The question is, “Do we really need something like this?” I suspect that if you ask a pheasant hunter, initially they would laugh but after thinking more they might ask, “Why would you want something like that? Some days when you find no pheasants provide as much enjoyment as the days when they are plentiful.”

When I consider all the AI tools that have burst onto the scene in the recent past, I wonder if having a tool that does all our research (or other work) for us doesn’t present the same dilemma. For example, when doing research in person, “Do I always stay on a single subject? Or do I see something that appears only slightly related that leads me in a new direction?”

Have we, in our haste to make and market a new tool failed by omitting the more difficult, common sense, component? I see articles about how AI tools are being used improperly. I also see articles about how AI tools present security problems or concerns. I wonder if AI tools are really needed or are they like the self-driving tractor that, while a neat (dating myself here) idea has only the benefit of driving up costs?

I have no answers to these questions. I only pose them as food for thought. If we don’t use CS (common sense) or ACS (artificial common sense), is AI (artificial intelligence) really beneficial?

Let’s Communicate

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From the time of our birth, we have always tried to communicate. Sometimes we do it well. At others we need to improve. And, unfortunately, at times we fail, either by choice or by chance.

As babies, we were often able to communicate very effectively with our parents. We could tell them when we were hungry, when we were sad, when we were happy, and when our diaper needed to be changed. We did this by nature. We did not need to use words. Our voices, our expressions, our actions communicated our needs.

As we grew older, we learned how to use simple syllables and words to communicate our needs. We sometimes didn’t understand what we were communicating but by imitation of others or achieving results, our communication skills grew.

In a few years, we learned our alphabet and how to put these letters together to create ever more complex words and to use these words to communicate the same things we expressed more simply as babies. Sometimes we learned words or phrases that caused us to “have our mouths washed out with soap” (not really, but another form of communication).

For those of us who are defined as “baby boomers”, our communication skills were further enhanced by family gatherings, often for dinners on weekends or overnight stays. This seemed to be common since families often lived nearby. This is, perhaps, more difficult today with families spread far and wide.

While the physical separation of families has presented challenges, it has also provided opportunities to introduce new technologies for communicating. One of the early methods for communicating was the telegraph. Using a combination of “dots and dashes” we discovered we could send electrical signals over long distances making written communication possible – something much faster than sending a letter.

This was followed by the introduction and then widespread use of the telephone. With this new technology, we could send our voice across the country over wire. It was truly a miracle. One that could not be easily understood but was appreciated by all.

These two technologies opened many doors for communication. Things like television with a wide selection of channels – the baby boomers probably remember having only three or four channels that were only on air for a limited number of hours each day. Things like today’s cell phones, email, and text messaging. Things that are not limited by borders. Who knows what the future may hold.

But as I said earlier, we are unfortunate that communication also faces some of its biggest challenges today. We could possibly blame this on chance. Technology is changing so rapidly that not all are able to keep abreast of the new ways to communicate. This may be because it is so difficult for us “old folks” to learn how to use new technology. Perhaps it is because it is too costly to own the “latest and greatest” things or even to see the need for these things. It might be something else that holds us back. But I find this difficult to accept because I know of many people of my generation that are just as likely to use the latest technology as are those of today’s generation.

Instead, I look at the world around us and wonder if we no longer communicate well because we do not want to communicate. Perhaps we see communication as a way for others to demand our help in solving their problems. Or maybe we see our time as “too valuable” to waste on sharing with others. Maybe politics is the cause, with communication forcing us to see that others may have valid or valuable opinions that may not match our own.

I see a world where parents are not communicating with their children because one group is more liberal or more conservative than the other. A world where life experiences seem to have no value or where “woke” viewpoints are discounted out-of-hand. A world where so-called media stars and other elites somehow see themselves as smarter than others in our country. A world where the opinions of the majority are lumped into a single, disagreeable group that can be blamed for everyone’s problems. A world where it has been suggested that family holiday gatherings, a prime location for communication, be cancelled because of political differences.

One hopes that we can begin communicating with others again; that we can have a world where families come together and resolve differences; maybe even a world where we can return to the simpler time when communication is a way to achieve our needs while recognizing those of others.

Let’s start to communicate and use our communications to resolve our important differences. If there is one thing that we all should have learned early in our lives is that no one is perfect but that does not prevent our living together. Communication is the key.