As I continue to wax poetically as main blog contributor, I am pulling loads of inspo from conversations about Money, Sex and Politics. And whilst I love to work smarter and not harder, I have been a bit of a slow adopter for this AI surge beyond the chatter and the screaming fright of "the bots are coming, the bots are coming!"
I am only now giving it a test run on my own writing projects because a) I feel compelled to build #Tequity because we can, and b) even though it feels like we are in a reality TV episode of The Jetsons whilst wearing smart glasses narrating Orwellian snippets in your voice of choice, we do have a say in how fast or slow, light or dark, and even how much value we allow technology to take from us.
Testing the Chat: Is the Hype Worth the Squeeze?
In my purest right brain / left brain combo of creative and nerd mode, I have gone ahead and tested AI chat tools, which I love to call Chat GI Joe. I asked the bot to explore the relationship between the internet and the human brain. It had a very basic answer lacking depth and my own human brain thought "Come on bots, you are smarter than this!" So I prompted it harder, with a more specific ask, to see if this recent buzz is actually worth the squeeze.
It is important to note that AI has been put into practice since the 1960s at MIT, and the fact that we are seeing a huge surge of it in pop culture right now is likely due to a myriad of reasons including more humans understanding our own power and being less inclined to be trolled by anyone, including a cute virtual assistant. But this tech was not built in a silo. Nothing ever is, and it is imperative that we look to the build of this tech and begin to ensure it is used as #Tequity.
The Internet and the Brain: Parallel Systems
When I asked the bot to compare the internet and the human brain, it offered some genuinely interesting parallels: both are incredibly complex networks, both process information, both handle multiple tasks simultaneously, both exhibit adaptability, and both accumulate vast stores of knowledge. The bot even acknowledged emergent properties, where complex behaviors arise from the interactions of simpler components.
But here is the key thing the bot said that matters most: "The internet is a human-made system designed for specific purposes, such as data transmission and communication." THIS IS KEY. We built it. We designed it. We decide what it does next.
What we know about the brain: the human brain actually keeps shifting and growing its capacity well into adulthood. It was previously thought that after early childhood, patterns are set, never to be re-wired; that old dogs could never learn new tricks. But our brains have so much elasticity and we are still learning just how much. If our own brains can keep evolving, surely the systems we build can, too.
Intelligence Is Relational
See, the thing is, the spectrum of intelligence is way more interesting than we can build in a box. But we have this uncanny human need to build the box first even if the systems are already growing around us.
What AI is not is a factory of brains being grown in a jar. Intelligence is relational and comes from our experience in the real world, not artificial, not just human but also not just inside our brain. Our physical and emotional experiences affect our human intelligence as does our environment, the families we are born into, and so much more.
Intelligence, whether we are talking artificial or real deal, is embodied and cannot be reduced to just thinking in the same way AI cannot be seen as just a reductive siloed system of technology somehow untouchable by human control. We built it after all and we can build it better if we are actively exposing its shadows AND building #Tequity into the models; both LLMs as well as the actual structure of companies that build this kind of tech.
Who Builds the Bots Matters
It is important to note that the leading AI companies are founded and led by a group of tech leaders that is certainly not the most diverse. This is not about villainizing individuals. It is about noticing that when a narrow slice of humanity builds the tools that will shape everyone's future, the output will be biased. And so let's thank the AI bots for their work thus far and add some diversity to the pot, shall we?
So What Do We Do?
The bot itself told me that balancing the advantages of AI with responsible and ethical development and deployment is essential to harness its full potential for the benefit of society. I am going to go ahead and agree with my robot friend on that one.
Intelligence is everywhere, so how does it allow us to think new thoughts about the world instead of the same old things? Join me and other thought leaders, industry disruptors, and business activists in changing the course of tech and thus the world. Work with us and we will glow up the internet together.
Love,
Rose
