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Unintelligent creationism

By Ed Goldman

Until it began its ascendancy to intergalactic prominence, I’d always though “artificial intelligence” characterized people who began sentences with, “As a scholar, I… .”

As you know or suspect, in the past couple of years hundreds of thousands of school-age and college-kids have started turning in term papers and graduate theses largely created by A-I apps. But it’s actually nothing new. We used to use A-I back when I was a schoolboy and college guy. We just called it by other names—like the World Book Encyclopedia and CliffsNotes. 

In my parents’ day there was something called The Book of Knowledge from which you could also crib facts if not entire articles (who’d check up on you? The books were long out of print). When I grew up, I used to page through the 26 volumes of our collection, which was the 1940s edition. I used to enjoy looking up the names of famous people no longer with the Department of Earth because back then, they were still alive—so an entry on one might say:

“Herbert Hoover, United States President, 1874-” 

There was no end date! It’s because Hoover didn’t die until 1964. The idea that the year of his death was still two decades away fascinated me for some reason. Many years later, my fascination took a cold turn when I saw this entry under the Library of Congress registration number for one of my own books:

“Edward (Ed) Goldman, 1950-“

I realized that someday someone might be leafing through something I’d written and playing the same game—one that can best be summarized by this: “Hey, here’s another guy who hadn’t croaked yet.”

Meanwhile, this word just in from CNN (no kidding): “Elon Musk says artificial intelligence will take all our jobs and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. ‘Probably none of us will have a job,’ Musk said about AI at a tech conference….”

Okay, let’s not panic. First, ask yourself a few questions:

1. WHAT EXACTLY IS ELON MUSK’S JOB? If your answer is, “Well, like, being a genius and stuff,” remember: While that may be a very generous appraisal it’s still not a job.
2. ARE YOU RETIRED? Don’t worry. A-I won’t take your “job”—unless someone teaches it to play canasta and talk about its arthritis.
3. DO YOU HAVE A MINDLESSLY REPETITIVE JOB? If so, A-I doesn’t want your job. It wants to be the CEO. You’re safe for now.
4. ARE YOU SETH ROGEN? 

Relax, Seth. There are some things even A-I wouldn’t want to be.

More from Musk, whose surname makes me think he’s the heir apparent to an aroma fortune. CNN reports: “’If you want to do a job that’s kinda like a hobby, you can do a job,’ Musk said.  ‘But otherwise, AI and the robots will provide any goods and services that you want.’ For this scenario to work, he said, there would need to be ‘universal high income” – not to be confused with universal basic income, although he did not share what that could look like.'”

Of course he didn’t. Musk is the kind of genius who thinks just asking a question is a step on the path to becoming enthroned as a sage. He’s a bit like a former president who mused aloud at a news conference—with two highly respected medical people seated behind him on the dais trying to not look shocked or violently amused—if a person could prevent or defeat COVID by taking a few swigs of Clorox. (The answer, you may recall, was a tad stronger than “Uh, no.”)

To amplify on an allusion I made at the start of this column, Artificial Intelligence isn’t really the same as pseudo-intellectuality. If that were the case, spotting its presence in legal briefs, financial reports and the aforementioned academic treatises would be considerably easier. Examples: