What’s with all of this talk abut Artificial Intelligence?Is it tue from what I’ve red that we are closer than ever to creating a sentient machine? I have my doubts because being sentient means being aware of self, perceiving and being able to respond to the environment around you. Humans are able to do this, the moment they are born, without intervention of any kind. Sure, it’s a low level, and learning has to take place for us over a long period of time before we are able to survive on our own, but the fact is still there that we are aware of light and darkness, sounds, heat and cold, hunger, to name a few, right from the start.How does a machine perform any of these (oh!, let’s not forget emotion as well), right out of it’s box? IT doesn’t.

We’ve all been enamored by the idea of Artificial Intelligence, because we like the idea of solving problems instantly. Or close to it. But what most don’t get is that what they (the developers) are calling “AI” is just programming. If you look at it carefully, it’s programming with a bias from guess where? The programmer. I admit I use Grok and chatBPT some (sometimes more than some) and I find I can research some information say, for a blog post, in a few seconds where if I went through any other interface, it might take me hours to aggregate the information that I want. So, from that standpoint, it’s a good research tool. But again, it’s programming. there’s no intelligence behind it other than that of the human that writes the code.

I have actually corrected Grok. That’s right. I asked for some information and it gave me most of what I asked for, but it gave me a position on the data – a built in opinion – and left out what I already knew was critical data. So I mentioned that to the program and it corrected itself. I wonder for hw long though. If it’s a learning program, it would take my input and incorporate it into its body of knowledge, like a human being. If it’s just rote code though, sure it’ll come back with an “Oopsy” but then the next person that asks for similar information will not get the corrected information.

Also, intelligence implies some sort of sentience, doesn’t it? Even a goldfish has a short memory of a few seconds. That’s actually more than and computer now known to humans. think about it: a goldfish is smarter than the most advanced computer ever designed. What we call “Artificial Intelligence” now is nothing more than a program with encyclopedic “knowledge” which is nothing more than seeming unlimited access to information that already exists. It can aggregate (as I mentioned) that information and also use what it has been taught to do all sorts of mundane tasks that humans have become bored with r just want an easier way to perform. Like writing. How about resumes? I

I had Grok look at my personal resume and come up with something that read better and stress certain areas, downplaying others. all I did was speak to it. It came up with a document that is one of the best I’ve ever seen. But its not because it’s smarter than me, it had some instruction from me as to what I wanted, then used its massive data reach with probably millions of resume examples, to construct one that was pretty much what I wanted, first try. But again, this program knew nothing about me as a person and just guessed, based on the input it had from my old resume along with the instruction on what I wanted to feature. No intelligence really needed and certainly not sentient because, guess what? I came back a few days later, gave it the same original resume, with the same verbal instructions, and it came up with something that was completely unusable.

That’s a long way around to warn about depending too much on what the developers are calling “AI” right now and I certainly wouldn’t pay for a subscription to any of it because it’s not 100% trustworthy on the result. You can’t tell where the programmer ends and the real data begins unless you’re familiar with the subject yourself. It’s fine for casual information gathering, but I wouldn’t gamble my business or career on it at the moment. that’s years away. Maybe.