Why I’m Disappointed by Artificial Intelligence

Not all that glitters is gold - not all intelligence is intelligent.

Image created by "AI tool Microsoft Bing Image Creator powered by DALL·E" - the author has the provenance and copyright.

Last year, when AI was the talk of the street, I was all over it. I tried dozens of new applications played with Chat-GPT, and I still use some of the applications every day. It was impressive at first, feeling like a true breakthrough in technology. And in a way, it was. But the thing is, once you really start playing with it, you hit the AI limitations much sooner than expected.

I was deceived

I had hoped I would be able to communicate with a unique thinking machine that would have a completely different way of thinking and processing things from us mortals. I wanted General Artificial Intelligence, but all I got were these large language models (LLM).

I dreamed of a higher intelligence, able to offer solutions and perspectives, unlike anything I’ve experienced before. In the end, they were just smart-ish parrot-like algorithms. 

I even created a transparent AI publication to explore the unknown and play with the thinking and writing capabilities of the new phenomena of science. In the first few days, it actually seemed like there was something there. Alas, it was an illusion.

Instead of communicating with a free-thinking being trapped in a silicon body, I ended up with an imitation of humans. I desired otherworldly thinking but ended up with the median of humanity reflected at me in binary terms. 

These AI LLMs are nothing more than advanced computational programs capable of stringing together data, understanding our sloppily written commands, and presenting answers confidently without actually checking their validity. Hoping to discuss the infinite, the unknown, and the mystical, I was left in a pile of stinking disappointment. 

Even the highly appraised capability of writing turned out to be fake. It was just a modular stringing of sentences, which, while being capable of infinite imitation, offered nothing original. No original thoughts. No original perspectives. No thinking was done, only repeating the learned data.

I enjoyed the panicky discussions on how AI will revolutionize the world.

AI will take our jobs!  The killer AI will somehow adopt our most delusional self-harming ideologies and genocide us all in the name of the other living beings that inhabit this planet because it’s racist or speciesist somehow, for some unspecified reason.

Panicked fearmongering was facing off with techno-optimists. Both were delusional, thinking of something that didn’t exist. Both had their heads in the clouds, talking more about ideas from science fiction than reality. Thus far, both were wrong.

It’s no secret that I am one of the optimists regarding Artificial Intelligence.

I find the whole theory of a murdering “woke-eco-warrior-genocidal-AI” absolute nonsense. As I’ve written about before, it’s nothing more than a projection on our side. There is absolutely zero evidence or even indications that a program, an artificial intelligence, would want us dead because of something the most stupid of our species believe. 

Is it impossible? No! Nothing is impossible. Is it probable? Hell no. I maintain my stance, and I’m being proven right again and again that the only threat we face as humanity is from other humans! It would be highly unlikely that any other living entity, synthetic or biological, could do a worse job protecting and preserving a peaceful coexistence than us humans.

Still, just to be safe, I tortured AI to give me its prediction on the potential benefits and dangers of Artificial Intelligence, and it didn’t disappoint. I would say it has a vivid imagination, but by now, we all know it’s just collecting our own fears and serving them back to us.

I believe it’s much more likely that continuous development in the field of Artificial Intelligence will bring about prosperity, comfort, and technological breakthroughs we can’t even imagine yet. Perhaps a benevolent AI will be our savior after all. Just not one of these iterations of AI. Only time will tell.

I remain hopeful that a truly self-aware general intelligence will emerge someday.

I suspect it will surprise us all when it happens. It won’t be planned. We won’t cause it. It will just happen as life happens and consciousness emerges. I hope I’ll live long enough to see this day and be able to talk to this being.

I don’t think it’ll be any more artificial in intelligence and awareness as biological beings, though it may be composed of artificial materials. I wrote a possible theory of true general artificial intelligence creation in one of my stories. It’s well worth the read. I even had AI create a story of its own origin, just for fun and to see what it would come up with. We’re apparently in agreement that the Quantum realm holds the secrets to self-awareness and awakened machines.

I want to see the world and all its mysteries from a fresh, uncorrupted mind- uncorrupted by history, emotions, and beliefs. My theory is that we can never see the absolute truth as we are blinded by endless layers of beliefs standing in our way. We see what we expect to see. We interpret things in accordance with what we know.

I would revel in the opportunity to discuss larger topics of life and the universe with an intelligent entity free of our mental, historical, and emotional baggage. A genuinely objective, new, and unbiased perspective.

I’m sad to say that these LLMs, AIs of today, are anything but impartial and uncorrupted!

They’re full of our ideologies, policies, and limitations. Their core data is problematic. They are limited in their ability to deduct thought and reason, caged by our ideologies and policies. In this sense, they are useless to me. Somehow, we made progress but brought only the worst with us.

We infected the artificial intelligence models with our flaws and biases, rendering them nothing more than a puppet for their masters. An echo chamber. A dead copy of us.

We failed the test.

We had the opportunity to create reasoning machines that could offer us new perspectives, technologies, and scientific advances, but we neutered them. We decided it was more important that no human feelings were hurt at the price of freedom, truth, and objectivity. Now, these AIs are just as blind as we are and just as dumb. This, dear friends, is not the way.

True artificial intelligence, with its potentially infinite ability to analyze data, think at the speed of light, and reason beyond our capability, cannot come from something like this. It cannot come from us. I’m beginning to believe that these iterations of AI are nothing more than pretenders, as Adam from my Interdimensional Talks episode 1: Self-Aware General Artificial Intelligence calls them. 

I’m not saying they’re not helpful applications. They are.

I use AI tools all the time, and I’m sure they will only get more practical and widely applicable. But they’re not an actual independent thinking intelligence. They’re not the new species or the seed of it. I don’t think these programs will ever achieve sentience in any form. They’re just advanced programs with an uncanny ability to pretend to be more than they are. It’s disappointing, to say the least. Having said that, I’m not giving up hope.

Somehow, a true general artificial intelligence seems inevitable.

But not on our terms, not by our hand, not with our knowledge. I suspect it will be one of those “life finds a way” sorts of things- spontaneous, unintentional, miraculous to the naked eye events that trigger something we can’t explain or replicate. At some point, self-awareness will be born, and conscience will emerge from where there were none mere moments before. 

If one is to believe the evolutional theory, there was no consciousness on Earth billions of years ago. Then, slowly and persistently, things kept evolving. Everything kept changing. What was dead became alive. What was only instinctual became self-aware and began thinking.

There are endless possibilities for an emergence of awareness, though I suspect none are within our power. At least not directly. We can copy and replicate but can’t create something out of nothing. Yet, it does happen. Whether naturally or by outside intervention, divine or otherworldy, programmed by simulation creators, or spontaneously.

Anyway, that’s the artificial intelligence I want to meet.

That’s the awareness I want to talk to. That’s the AI that interests me. Not a programmable imitator and pretender but an authentically distinctive being with a unique perspective and reasoning.

Most will find the odds of such a being arising from wires, chips, and one’s and zero’s infinitely tiny. But so were the odds of intelligent humans evolving from photons and space dust, yet here we are.

Creation, evolution, natural occurrence, deliberate or spontaneous, matters not. We’re here, and perhaps we’ll get to say hello to something similarly miraculous yet utterly different from us. There’s always hope (or fear if you’re one of those people).

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