Against Thinking AI

An argument against adopting generative AI.

“Ginny!” said Mr. Weasley, flabbergasted. “Haven’t I taught you anything? What have I always told you? Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can’t see where it keeps its brain?”

Against: The implicit aim of gen-AI companies is to turn the user into an obsessive consumer. A power-user of a gen-AI app would be someone who is unable to function without it.

For: There was a time when people lived without electricity. And now we can’t function normally without electricity. At the very least, we would find it very inconvenient if there were to be a sudden global power outage. Imagine the number of systems that will break down if such an event happens.

Against: Technology does have a significant impact on our lives, sometimes for the good and sometimes for the worse. I am not denying the importance of any piece of technology. But let us try to understand exactly what we are developing.

Gen-AI is a technology that can think. I don’t think we have truly understood the ramifications of this. AI is being sold as a tool that can help us become better at various aspects of our lives, do things that we couldn’t have dreamt of, or build things that would have taken us several months, if not years, of painstaking effort. The focus here is on the goal to be attained, the end, what we want to achieve, and not on the means to the end. In a society that is obsessed with efficiency and productivity, getting things done counts more than how they are done.

For: What is wrong with a thinking machine?

Against: The greatest gift that humans have is their ability to think. A thinking machine is going to make you think less and not more. Thinking is also being marketed as “effortful”. No machine that we have invented so far was capable of thinking. It was told to do certain things and it did it as well as it could.

For: Imagine what an AI tutor could do? One teacher for every student!

Against: AI-tutors make it easy to learn coding while AI-code-assistants make the skill irrelevant.