An Observation on Artificial Intelligence

Can machines think? Well, as everyone says, machines can do what their creators can do, only faster and better. But their creators are humans, and humans of a purely practical, materialist orientation — doohickey specialists and thingamajig experts. Such humans do not and cannot, in the strictest sense, think. Zero times a million equals zero. Therefore, machines cannot think. Calculate, yes. Compile and catalogue, yes. Regurgitate and repeat, yes. Think, no.

Does this mean “artificial intelligence” presents no real danger? Certainly not. After all, the non-thinking element of the human being can be quite dangerous indeed, and artificial intelligence is, by design at least, nothing but this non-thinking element run amok. It cannot be “smarter than we are.” However, it can and must be less wise than we are. But a world increasingly operating on principles utterly and necessarily devoid of wisdom is a sort of nightmare scenario, is it not? The paradox of this so-called artificial intelligence is that its implementation assures that we will, to the extent this implementation is successful, live in the most profoundly stupid world humans have ever inhabited. An unprecedented predicament in human history: A world informed and regulated not in the ordinary fog of partial ignorance, aka the human condition, but in the pure darkness of absolute ignorance.