AI

It is odd to think that so many people think intelligence is the summum bonum of human existence.  Intelligence comprehends the experience of competence, of understanding, of efficiency, but does not comprise it.  It is quite possible for someone baking really good peanut butter cookies to feel the same joy and pride as a mathematician might feel in solving a particularly vexing problem.

You might say this is wrong, because the one is vastly harder, vastly more useful, perhaps, than the cookies.  This may be true, but am I wrong?  Should we call the person stupid for feeling good about his or her cookies?  Should we not take MORE opportunities to feel good, not less?  Would the world not be a better place if we did?

In America, particularly, we have this cult of efficiency.  It has, to state the obvious, made us more efficient, but only at creating and distributing things.  It has made us stupid when it comes to the savoring and appreciation of life. In doing everything faster, we do everything which matters worse, or not at all.

I think AI is the ultimate emblem of this.  Some seem to feel that, as frenetic as our pace already is, it should be faster, that, lacking any sound reason for doing so, we should do more and more.

I ask: Why?  what is the goal?  We’ve solved the problem of hunger, in this country at least, at least for the vast bulk of our citizens.  And AI is not being created to feed the heroin addicts laying on the sidewalk down on Market Street.

It would seem we know more and more about less and less.  What we know doesn’t really matter, and what really matters we seemingly know nothing about.  This is only mild hyperbole, in far too many cases.

I talk with rich people sometimes, and you know, they pay a price for their wealth.  They earn it.  Don’t envy them, most of them in any event.