Memorial Day - Placing a Value on Death?

In the USA we have two federal holidays dedicated to the military – Memorial Day and Veterans Day.  The former specifically honors those who have lost their lives in the wars of our nation, while the latter is a general recognition of all veterans, though still heavily focused on those who died.

The wars of my generation – Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan – have been almost universally acknowledged as tragic mistakes and failures.  The loved ones of those who lost their lives (or were horribly maimed) in those conflicts probably find little solace in the idea of a higher cause.  There was no victory, no great achievement, no noble sacrifice.  They must wrestle with the notion that their sons and daughters, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers died for nothing, for no reason at all.

 

I would offer a counter argument, that any sacrifice of a life in good faith, regardless of the outcome, should be honored.  The fireman who rushes into a building to save a child and is killed should be honored even if the child dies or was no longer in the building.  It is the act and intention that counts, not the outcome.

 

But every attempt to place some sort of value on a death must ultimately seem a pitiful effort in the face of the horrible injustice of an early death.  The teenager who dies in a car crash, the child who succumbs to cancer, the young adult who overdoses, the kid who is murdered in a drive-by fusillade, the school children massacred in a mass shooting – the incomprehensible tragedy of it all haunts us.

 

Death, even in old age, unleashes a barrage of painful implications – the loss of a loved one and the horrific realization that one will never see them again; the potent reminder of our mortality and the rapid falling of the sand in our own hourglass; the question of life’s meaning and the troubling enigma of our existence.   And these thoughts are ever so much more poignant and relentless when the death is a youthful one.

 

Yes, time does partially heal the wounds.  And yes, we are resilient creatures who carry on even in the face of all of our doubts and fears.  And yes, there is joy to be had in this life no matter what hardships and tragedies confront us.  But death, and especially the death of the young, is never easily rationalized, and it remains a confounding aspect of our lives and rattles our faith and our spirit.  Attempting to place a value on a death is to a great extent a self-delusion, and I wonder whether it offers any real consolation.

 

AI and Genetic Engineering - Twin Horsemen of the Apocalypse?

The tsunami of fawning and fearful AI articles in the media over the last few months is breathtaking.  It might lead one to wonder whether chatbots are auto-generating all of these articles as part of an evil ploy to create widespread panic and prepare the world for AI’s takeover!  

The hyperbole reminds me of the hysteria that has frequently accompanied news events associated with genetic engineering.  These two technology frontiers are flip sides of the same coin – changing the basic nature and scope of humanity.  They are simultaneously thrilling and terrifying, harbingers of a very uncertain but intriguing future world.

 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been a topic of discussion for several decades.  And like much of technology jargon, it is a very broad term that people overuse to either make themselves seem knowledgeable or, in this case, to sell content to a public hungry for apocalyptic rumors and new things to obsess about.

 

So, what is AI?  Wikipedia defines it as:  intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by humans or by other animals.

 

On the one hand, one can argue that all computer applications, and even many mechanical or electrical machines, are exhibiting artificial intelligence, in that they are independently performing tasks that mimic human tasks or behavior.  This type of artificial intelligence is confined to specific tasks and limited by the set of instructions that a human being has programmed into the computer. The tasks can be quite complicated, but they are constrained to act in a previously defined manner.

 

But when computer scientists talk about AI, they are more likely talking about systems and software that can ‘learn’ to perform a task rather than just perform the task.  These learning systems rely on massive amounts of data to adapt their capabilities, just as we humans require years of training to learn to understand, speak, move, and reason.  How closely these machine learning algorithms mimic our own brains is difficult to say, as we are still in early days of understanding the human brain’s inner workings.

 

The point of these machine learning systems is to enable computerized systems to perform tasks that would be impossible for previous pre-programmed systems – for example, recognizing objects or faces, driving cars, or creating unique content or images.  The learning systems are essentially writing their own code, or at least adapting it as they go through a process of trial and error.

 

The ability for learning systems to adapt and change has both advantages and disadvantages.  The advantage is obvious – that they can accomplish far more than their earlier fixed-program brethren.  The disadvantage, and the thing that provokes understandable fear and hysteria in the media and even among many of the pioneers in this technology, is that once these programs are unconstrained, there is the possibility that they will do unexpected and even unwanted things.  The danger is that we will lose control of how their software grows and how they ultimately behave.

 

This unpredictability is not a big problem in an AI-driven autonomous vacuum cleaner, but it could be a problem in autonomous vehicles, drones, robotic soldiers, and yes, even content generating applications like chatgpt.

 

AI is ultimately seeking to aid or replace human intelligence with a potentially unbounded and unregulated alternative intelligence.  Genetic engineering, on the other hand, offers the capability to change the human vessel itself.  Though currently held somewhat in check by international agreements, the capability to edit gene sequences and alter genomes tempts us to both repair and optimize human beings with all of the inherent uncertainties and risks.  As in all technological advancement, there is potential for both good and evil, and for a whole plethora of unintended consequences.

 

Can future AI and genetic engineering efforts be regulated in such a way as to put controls or curbs in place and ensure that no harmful consequences ensue?  This is the difficult challenge that faces the world today. The genies are already out of the bottle.  If we lose control of them, or even more sadly, employ them indiscriminately in a mad arms race for power and global dominance, then the apocalypse may be just around the corner.