When I\u2019m in conversations about artificial intelligence, I like to lean into my Brethren identity. I feel good about being slow to adopt new technology where the end result is unconvincing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or terrifying. That\u2019s not my word; that\u2019s the word used by two different presenters at a recent conference\u2014both of them early and consistent users of AI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I mentioned this word to a lawyer who specializes in publishing rights and AI, he asked, “Did you see the movie Oppenheimer<\/em>“? I sure did. We chuckled uneasily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I recognize that AI is embedded into my everyday life, bidden or unbidden: Predictive text has gotten annoying, but texting with AI turned off is laborious. Search engines give fast answers because of AI. It\u2019s there at the end of every paragraph in Gmail, asking whether I want to improve my wording. (How to annoy an editor: Have a machine keep offering to make your writing better.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The conference presenters emphasized that AI is a useful tool but should never be used without your scrutiny, honed by years of critical thinking\u2014and maybe even a degree in English literature. Use of AI as a tool should begin with a human and end with a human, one of them said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That might be fine for those of you in the middle of your careers, said a young person in the audience. What advice would you give to someone who’s 22 and doesn’t have those years of experience? she asked. In today’s world, how do I develop the critical thinking skills I need to use AI responsibly?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Good question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Cognitive surrender” is a term used to describe what happens to our brains when we willingly hand over our thinking ability to AI. What will life be like a generation after we have surrendered our ability to think critically?<\/p>\n\n\n\n For now I’m using my critical thinking skills to listen to those addressing the ethical issues around AI. Many of those are well known, but from the World Association for Christian Communication<\/a> I learned of a new one: “digital colonialism.” This term, which originates from the Global South, refers to the exploitation of millions of people who do the hidden data annotation that makes AI work. (See more Artificial intelligence is trained on the hoovered-up creativity of the world’s humans, and it’s dependent on human “ghost workers” to provide digital labor. AI consumes massive amounts of fresh water and energy needed by humans to live. And nobody\u2014most notably those in charge of the AI race\u2014knows what will happen next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From Ecclesiastes: “Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “In conversations about artificial intelligence, I like to lean into my Brethren identity.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5387,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-from-the-publisher"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5388"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5391,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5388\/revisions\/5391"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
at \u201cThe Hidden Cost of AI<\/a>.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n