The press is having a field day with artificial intelligence. Depending on what you read, AI will eliminate millions of jobs, make many professions obsolete, spread misinformation, destroy creativity, run amok, go rogue, or perhaps eventually decide that humans are no longer necessary. There is no shortage of doomsday scenarios.

I am not convinced, although that doesn't mean I dismiss the risks. AI is an extraordinarily powerful technology, and powerful technologies inevitably create both opportunities and problems. Perhaps we are asking the wrong question when we ask whether AI is our friend or our foe. AI is neither. It is a tool and a remarkably powerful one.

What AI Does Well

The advantages are already apparent. AI is fast, efficient, and available around the clock. It doesn't get tired, call in sick, take vacations, or get bored doing repetitive work. It can process enormous amounts of information in seconds and is remarkably good at summarizing, comparing, analyzing, translating, researching, drafting, editing, and identifying patterns. In some applications, it already performs certain tasks faster and better than humans.

More importantly, AI can give ordinary people capabilities that once required specialists. A small-business owner can have something resembling a marketing department. A programmer can have a coding assistant. A student can have a tutor. A writer can have an editor. An entrepreneur can have a brainstorming partner.

I have experienced this myself. Used properly, AI doesn't necessarily replace what I do. It helps me do it faster and sometimes better. Much of the discussion about AI focuses on what it will replace. We should probably spend more time thinking about what it will augment.

AI Has Plenty of Faults

Anyone who has spent much time with AI also knows that it is far from perfect. It makes mistakes and, worse, can make them with remarkable confidence. A wrong answer can sound every bit as convincing as a correct one.

AI can also be too agreeable. Ask a question in a certain way, and it may validate your premise rather than challenge it. That can feel good, but it isn't necessarily helpful. AI also depends heavily on what humans have already discovered, written, debated, and recorded. It can synthesize that information extraordinarily well, but synthesis is not the same as wisdom, original thought, or human experience.

AI can write about grief without ever grieving, describe love without loving anyone, explain entrepreneurship without ever risking a dollar, and describe riding a horse without ever sitting in a saddle. Sometimes the result simply feels fake. The prose is polished but sterile. The photograph looks almost real, but something isn't quite right. The answer sounds impressive but doesn't pass the smell test.

The User Still Matters

We used to say about computers, "Garbage in, garbage out." There is still some truth to that, although today's AI is sophisticated enough to compensate for a mediocre question. Still, the user matters enormously.

A thoughtful question usually produces a better answer. An experienced user knows when to ask a follow-up question, challenge an assumption, request evidence, seek another perspective, or simply say, "I don't think that's right."

That leads me to what I believe may be one of the most important lessons about artificial intelligence: AI doesn't eliminate the need to think. It increases the penalty for not thinking. Getting an answer has never been easier, but getting an answer is not the same as knowing whether the answer is right. As AI becomes more sophisticated, human judgment becomes more important, not less.

Is AI Evil?

I don't spend much time worrying about evil AI. I worry much more about people using AI for evil purposes. Dr. Eli David has expressed this idea more forcefully: “I'm not worried about evil AI. I'm very worried about evil humans using AI.”

I share that concern. AI can be used to educate or deceive, identify fraud or commit it, create useful information or manufacture misinformation. But that isn't unique to AI. Fire can heat a house or burn it down. The printing press can distribute knowledge or propaganda. The internet can educate people or deceive them. Powerful technology tends to magnify human capability, including our ability to do both good and bad things.

There is an important qualification. Not every danger requires an evil person. Poorly designed systems, excessive reliance on automation, inadequate safeguards, and simple human mistakes can also cause damage. Responsible development matters, but so does responsible use.

Skill, Judgment, and Ethics

Early adopters have already embraced AI. Some have good intentions. Others don't. I believe realizing the enormous promise of AI will require increasingly sophisticated and trained users with good intentions and sound ethics.

For me, that comes down to three things: skill, judgment, and ethics. Skill is knowing how to use AI. Judgment is knowing when to trust it. Ethics is deciding what to use it for. We are going to need all three.

There is an understandable fear that AI will make human intelligence less important. I suspect the opposite may be true. As artificial intelligence becomes more powerful, human intelligence, judgment, curiosity, experience, and character may become more valuable. AI can provide information and choices, but we still have to decide what they mean and what to do with them.

So, what danger awaits us down this road? The technology itself isn't where I would place my greatest concern. Perhaps the greatest danger from AI isn't that it will start thinking for itself. It is that we will stop thinking for ourselves.

John Bradley Jackson
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P.S. Buddha said, "What we think, we become."