“Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.” Big AL
I knew it. I knew it. Judging by the title and the quote from Einstein, we’re going to be talking about intelligence in the broadest possible sense. Willing to bet, it’s broader than you think. Just before sitting down here, I got a tattoo on my left, rear shoulder. I can’t not start off with it, but I’m going to look for a thread in there somewhere to bring us back.
Twenty years ago, when I was first beamed to Kauai, my short list of things to be done immediately were a kayak, a motorcycle and a tattoo. Of the three, ink was definitely the most out there for me. I grew up in Queens, NY in the fifties, amongst a lot of Jews. For reasons I will spare you, my people think the body is a temple, not to be defiled or desecrated. Ancient Jewish doctors made sure that circumcisions were kosher, because there was big bucks in the ceremony.
If you had a tattoo, you must have been in the Navy, at least that’s my distant recollection, or something like that. In addition, I was fucken ignorant about this place, before coming here. I don’t think I’ve progressed all that much since, which is why I love the mystery of Lady Kauai. Anyway, this genius connected Hawaii and tattoos, probably fucking it up with the Maori, because I was such a terrific student of the Asian Pacific.
The tattoo is a small image of the Eternal Knot, a symbol of birth, death and rebirth in Tibetan Buddhism. It is on my right shoulder blade. This year has felt like it’s been filled with beginnings, starting over for the one-millionth time and loving the shit out of it.
Sorry, I really don’t want to get stuck on the tattoo story, because I made a big decision for me and my writing to you guys. I feel the need to jump over into something like philosophical journalism, a first for me with you. Shit, I’ve got to finish the tattoo tale.
In the spirit of fresh beginnings, I committed to getting a second one. I knew I wanted it to be the lotus. In the mystical land where the ink knot came from, the lotus symbolizes how singular beauty can burst forward from a muddy pond. I shit you not, this takes us to where I have been thinking about going all week.
Two or three of you may know I always make stories about Artificial Intelligence, the first thing I cover in my, award-winning weekly, news podcast, Naked News/Improv. My podcast has kind of morphed into being my creative outhouse for all that ails me about this planet and its inhabitants, that would be us. As a result, these stories to you are small ones, everyday kind of stuff that happens to us all. I love the segregation, because the world I talk about is terribly polluted. The one I write about is always looking for the light in us all.
I have to make this one exception. Of all the muck I wade through each week, this is far and away the most important story I could ever have imagined. The reality of Artificial Intelligence is one more shock in my life time and this cookie is lethal to the max. I don’t particularly care for all of the so called experts and pundits, none of whom have a humanist approach to this looming cataclysm.
Let’s go back to a time when we were these hairy creatures, scraping our knuckles along the ground. The first moron, who sat on a flame, had a very painful epiphany. From that prehistoric singe came the unstoppable momentum to always want what’s next.
Our genius as a species is also our nemesis. Our imperfection is our humanity and for some reason, we keeping looking for this unattainable perfection, which only feeds the need.
Check out what Tesla had to say in 1900: “I purpose to show that, however impossible it may now seem, an automaton may be contrived which will have its ‘own mind,’ and by this, I mean that it will be able, independent of any operator, left entirely to itself, to perform, in response to external influences affecting its sensitive organs, a great variety of acts and operations as if it had intelligence.”
Even though I have been wrestling with this subject; extraordinary journalist that I am, I haven’t brought it home to our house. I know you don’t care, but it’s a big deal to me. It’s funny, with my writing, I live in this weird little universe, with its especially dumb rules.
After the accidental discovery of the wheel, it was game over. Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to introduce you to PROGRESS. No matter what it is, PROGRESS can improve upon it. In a way, it’s a mindless kind of knee-jerk, movement forward, consequences be damned. In that world, aping on intellectual steroids, I think the ultimate is to create a better than perfect replicant of ourselves, techno-vanity up the ole bum hole.
In its infancy, AI is very intoxicating, seemingly to most everyone. These are moments when I wonder what the Buddha would say about all this. Frankly, what he said 2,500 years ago, doesn’t have to be changed one bit, because it is timeless.
To be human is to suffer. To be human is to lose. To be human is to fear. To be human is to love. To be human is to not know. To be human is to have faith. To be human is to have compassion. We are each unique in all the world. We have the ability to embrace our mortality, our imperfection. It is the transient nature of everything that is life’s ultimate education.
The sirens of our intellectual vanity are going to crash us on the shores of servitude to our perfect creation. We want everything, even though we know it’s simply not possible. The human being is a marvelous concoction of one miracle after another. Why give it up to a machine?
OK, OK, I know you want me to mention my tattoo one more time. First, it is still there, even though I have to fucken contort myself to see it in the mirror.
To me, the lotus is about this miracle of being human. Sometimes, it is unbelievable what can spring forth from the cesspool of our spiritual myopia. It is a power within us all. Right across the road, poised on the matching shoulder is our timeless, geometric symbol, representing the full cycle of life, coming back around forever. I love them both and that completes my Tale of the Tats.
Every now and then, I think I’ve invented a word, which is totally fucked on my part. Nevertheless, I did it one more time. AI is going to trap us mice in a maze of mirrors with no way out, making us all part of the glowing, future world of Techmanity.
WELCOME TO TECHMANITY LAND. WE THINK AND FEEL FOR YOU.