“Ok Google: What should I do in 2017?”
Can Artificial Intelligence answer all our questions?
We are living through a period of cultural transformation. Cultural institutions that used to be invulnerable are now all-but completely destroyed. Multinational companies, political parties, and governments are weakening, fracturing, and imploding. Big things, life defining things, are coming apart.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the next great hope of tech enthusiasts. Can AI help us solve our problems? Does Google know what I should do in 2017? Let’s try it!
Just Ask Google
Google’s Assistant, “Ok Google”, is an AI that’s suppose to be able to not just answer fact based questions, but give intelligent recommendations. Can it help me with a big life decision? Let’s see.
Me: “Ok, Google: What age should I graduate high school?”
Google: “18…”
Me: “Nice work 👍”, using a friendly congenial tone of voice ☺️.
Google: “Thank you”
But then the wheels start to come off…
Me: “Ok, Google. What is the right age to get a bachelors degree?”
Google: “The ‘right’ age to graduate is whatever age you are when you have fulfilled the requirements to obtain a degree…”
Me: That sounds like such a solid answer, but wait a second… the right age to graduate is whenever you can graduate. That’s almost a tautology, isn’t it?
Me: “Ok, Google. I get it but that sounds like a tautology”
And the wheels are officially off…
Google: “Here are some matching videos for toot elegy”
Me: “A toot elegy?!?!?!?”, in a bemused and slightly annoyed tone. Let’s move on. Try something easier.
Me: “Ok, Google.”, getting more frustrated now, “When do most people get married?”
Google: “No idea”
Me: (Thinking, Ok Google… I’ll cut you some slack) “Ok, Google. Average age of first marriage?”
Google: “Americans are getting married later and later. The average age of first marriage in United States is 27 for women and 29 for men, up from 23 for women and 26 for men in 1990 and 20 and 22 in 1960!”
More questions
Google is good at repeating facts but bad at giving advice.
I won’t bore you with questions about family & kids, home, city, church, trade/craft, and political parties. Just believe me, it gets worse from here. Google is good at repeating facts but bad at giving advice. It’s not that Google’s AI isn’t impressive. No. Not at all. It’s very impressive. When it’s on point, it’s strikingly on point.
AI is a fun house mirror. It reflects the reality we give it.
No, the issue is really with us, not the AI. AI, at least for now, only parrots back to you what we as a society, the Internet, and the Technium tell it. AI is a fun house mirror. It reflects the reality we give it.
Our society values of choice and individual freedom are reflected clearly in the OK Google results above. Google parrots back the sometimes contradictory reality it gets from our societies internet exhaust.
Countless similar examples of AI’s dependace on its trainers could be assembled. Have you heard of the AI trained to spot criminals based on facial features? Yes. It’s a thing!. Katherine Bailey dissects it here.
Using this AI is helpful only if your goal is to perpetuate whatever errors exist in our current court system forever.
This AI is deeply flawed and its flaws come from its trainers, us. It is trained assuming that every court conviction is 100% true. In other words, it assumes everyone the justice system calls a criminal actually committed the crime. We know for a fact based on the DNA exoneration of the past 15 years this is a false assumption. Using this AI is helpful only if your goal is to perpetuate whatever errors exist in our current court system forever. AI might sound like an appealing solution to issues of human bias, but garbage in garbage out. Sadly this is just one of many examples of deeply flawed applications of AI. For a host of similar examples check out Cathy O’Neil’s excellent book Weapons of Math Destruction.
Sadly, life’s big questions won’t be answered by AI anytime soon.
Unfortunately, there no shortcut, not even AI, when you’re trying to answer life’s big questions. Climate change, poverty, technological unemployment, the creation of beauty in often ugly world, and the meaning of life- they’re all up to us to figure out. It’s hard work, but we’re the only ones who can do it.
So, what will you do in 2017?
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