Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the main story around the world. Journalists and authors are beginning to fathom the extent to which AI will change society, personal psychology, industry, science and the human experience of government. What has been reported on recently is AI influence on every sector of life from privacy and security to health maintenance to the workplace and education.
Journalists today are beginning to recognize the power of AI to erase whole cultures thereby turning the world into one perspective, one government, one economy and one corporate reality. [This insight calls to mind the movie 1984]. The enormity of these insights is personal. Consider the following excerpt from Atlantic magazine:
“AI is positioned more and more as the portal through which billions of people might soon access the internet. Yet so far, the technology has developed in such a way that will reinforce the dominance of English while possibly degrading the experience of the web for those who primarily speak languages with less minable data. “AI models might also be void of cultural nuance and context, no matter how grammatically adept they become,” Matteo writes. “Such programs long translated ‘good morning’ to a variation of ‘someone has died’ in Yoruba,” David Adelani, a DeepMind research fellow at University College London told Matteo, “because the same Yoruba phrase can convey either meaning.”
In other words, the core life experiences of whole cultures will fade away because the only language is English. We’ve been here before; how many of us can speak any number of American Indian languages? Mayan? Has not having a broad speaking base also eliminated the associated cultures? More aggressively, remember the impact of ‘superior’ European culture over the destruction of American Indian life? Mariner suspects this dominance of one culture over others will come with AI.
Taken to a more abstract level, will AI reduce the human psyche to one profile, one behavior, one history? Some writers speak positively about this ‘phase’ being required as a requisite for a genuine United Nations polity. Many allude to technical advances and even further convenience in life.
Well, whatever AI thinks we should do.
Ancient Mariner