Part
of what makes humans special is that we build machines. There are a few other creatures that
make tools, but only humans make machines. We’ve gotten better and better at it over the last two
hundred years; and really super at it in the last thirty.
These
machines have helped us build even better machines. They have helped us explore all the fields of science in
ways that could not even be imagined forty years ago. Think about all we’ve learned about genetics, or how the
brain works. The Super- Collider;
that’s kind of special. I’m
impressed that this post will be read by people all over the world. I even get a map of where they live as
Google tracks us all.
It’s
amazing stuff to a guy like me who once had to climb up three stories on a fire
escape and sit outside a window to watch a new device called television, and be
able to see a little puppet sing that it was “Dootie Time.”
Is
there a downside?
Of
course there is. We all have
learned that there are always trade offs in life. Even the best medication has
side effects. Every change brings
unanticipated consequences.
I’ll
take two examples that I read about in yesterday’s paper. The first was a review of the new
movie, Ex Machina. I haven’t seen
it yet, and it may not be the kind of thing I want to take my wife to, but it
is a highly over-dramatized version of what people are becoming afraid of: that
machines will begin to be smarter than we are, psych us out, replicate
themselves and being running our lives.
That
movie seems to get all involved with the sex thing, which is kind of creepy but
will certainly attract a crowd. I
am also not really as worried about
“Ava” or HAL becoming President as I would be about Ted Cruz, but there
are other real fears.
One
fear is the one I got when I read Nicholas Kristof’s column that described how
badly American kids do at math.
Mr. Kristof didn’t talk about machines; he just said that most Americans
can barely make change, and that we are terrible when dealing with more complex
numerical situations (Boastful Disclaimer: I solved all of his problems, even his last one, and I’m
proud of being good at 8th grade math).
Bit
I relate America’s lack of numerical skills to its accessibility to machines
for a few reasons. First, doing
math requires people to think slowly.
You have to add this, divide by that, watch out of the signs, think
about the ratios, and check to see if the answer makes sense. Yes, many people
can do it really quickly, but those are people who do it a lot and have
developed all the good habits.
Most
people, partly because of machines, are expecting everything to come with one
flash and one click and don’t have the patience to think slowly. Also, we all have access to those kinds
of machines. I just asked “Siri”
for the square root of 6789. It took literally two seconds for it to tell me
82.39538822. I could have done it
the long way and actually gone to the calculator app, but why go through all
that trouble.
Also,
the same phone (hand held computer) has a GPS system. That gives me pretty exact directions to almost anywhere
that has a road to it. I use it
often. But I try not to use it if
I go back again. I want to know
where the place really is and have that in my mind. I want to know how it is attached to the rest of the world.
I
know, from recent developments in brain science, that if we don’t learn and use
these skills, then certain areas of our brains just won’t develop and the
skills not only won’t be there when we need them, we will limit the way we
think about almost every thing we do and almost every situation that confronts
us. If we don’t know ratios, and
connections and locations, and relative strengths, and causes and effects we
won’t be very successful at feeding ourselves, finding a safe place to live and
getting along with a mate.
If
we can’t do that very well then machines will do it for us. Then we may reach a
state in which we won’t even be able to tell if the machines are doing a good
job.
That
may still be better than following Ted Cruz, but not much.
No comments:
Post a Comment