Fear of being outsmarted ensuring human commitment to mediocrity and dumbing down?

Artificial Emotional Intelligence and its Human Implications (Part #16)

As implied by the outcome of The White House gathering of March 2023 (noted above), the implications of the development of AI are increasingly framed as fearful for humanity. Such developments of intelligence are to be scaled back, especially to the extent they are rendered publicly accessible. There is however not the faintest possibility that their use by intelligence agencies, military and other authorities will be subject to intelligent constraints. Little is said of their future development by organized crime and how this is to be intelligently constrained.

It is curious that in a period of global crisis in governance, it is those in decision-making positions who are themselves fearful of challenges to their incompetence and inability to dialogue fruitfully with those with whom they disagree. The possibility that AI might enable more fruitful modalities of governance is simply denied. Intellectual challenges are to be met with knee-jerk responses -- whilst cynically continuing to claim the pursuit of human excellence and the highest of human values. An institutional preference for engendering mediocrity has become apparent as an appropriate response -- dumbing down, as foreseen in dystopian science fiction.

There is an irony to the emerging fearfulness in relation to any richer mapping of the challenges and possibilities more coherently. This is framed by the labelling of regions on old maps with the phrase "here be dragons". The phrase has been appropriately adopted by Patricia Alexander ("Here Be Dragons!": Mapping the Realm of Higher-Order, Critical, and Critical-Analytic Thinking, Educational Psychology Review, 35, 2023, 42).

Interaction with ChatGPT, as illustrated by the exchange above, is a learning experience in its own right. How might people develop the skills to engage meaningfully with intellectual resources of far greater capacity? Is the challenge comparable to the encounter:

of primitive humans with fire and its dangers -- and how to derive benefit from it?
of indigenous peoples with an esteemed tribal elder -- to whom respect is variously due?
of some with a person deemed to be especially wise -- and suggesting existential challenges?
with the player of a game of far greater expertise -- by whom defeat is potentially guaranteed?
with a criminal godfather, known to be inherently dangerous and unpredictable -- an existential threat to be navigated?
with extraterrestrials of higher intelligence -- as variously explored by science fiction?

Is the possibility of being outsmarted by AI to be understood as offering humanity a healthy dose of humility in a period in which ideological, political, religious and intellectual arrogance have a dangerous impact on many processes in societies which claim to be democratic and forward thinking? Is AEI a direct challenge to human arrogance?

Most curious is the response currently envisaged by experts and authorities, namely a form of "intelligence lockdown" -- recalling the controversially advocated policy with regard to the recent pandemic. Is the emergence of AI to be seen as requiring that the population "cower" in the face of it -- a cowardly human response to a "pandemic of artificial intelligence" engendered by human ingenuity of the highest order?

The recent pandemic has resulted in the controversial formulation of global treaty provisions by WHO to manage future pandemics (Global leaders unite in urgent call for international pandemic treaty, WHO, 30 March 2021; Countries begin negotiations on global agreement to protect world from future pandemic emergencies, WHO, 3 March 2023). Immediately following the announced termination of that pandemic, is the proliferation of AI now being framed through that mindset and playbook?

The parallels are all the more curious in that there is already an understanding of "memetic viruses" and their mutation -- potentially to be seen in terms of the creativity and innovation enabled by AI (Richard Dawkins, Viruses of the Mind, 1991; Shontavia Johnson, Memetics and the science of going viral, The Conversation, 16 September 2016; What is a "viral memetic infection of the brain" and why should we be concerned about it to survive? Daily Kos, 30 November 2019). Is AI then to be understood as enabling dangerous "infection" -- by intelligence, new ideas and paradigm shifts?

Optimists, faced with the current array of global crises and strategic incompetence, typically refer hopefully to the capacity of human ingenuity and imagination. It could be considered extraordinary that deliberate efforts are now made to constrain selectively the products of that ingenuity -- potentially vital to more appropriate strategic approaches.