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Making the Case for Experimenting with AI
Published 7 months ago • 4 min read
Making the Case for Experimenting with AI
The Liquid Engineer – Issue No. 35
Is it worth your time to experiment with AI? This question might seem superfluous. AI has been here for years now and you’ve seen what it can do. There’s no need to argue for its relevance, right?
Alas, here in Germany, in the middle of Europe, things are running a bit differently. Here’s a snippet from prominent football coach Dieter Hecking.
(Source: Youtube.com)
His answer to whether he is using AI is he’s using DI, Dieter’s intelligence. This gets him hundreds of likes and supportive comments. He clearly gets away with not even bothering with AI.
Even in discussions with German tech nerds, I often get a lot of skepticism. Negative implications of AI are amplified and serve as a justification to not exploring the technology. So, we’re in a state where many prominent thought leaders ignore or advocate against it!
There clearly is a need to make the case for AI in general before we can even start discussing the benefits of running it locally on your own hardware.
So, let’s imagine you are super skeptical about AI. There are a lot of reasonable arguments against it. Like Dieter, your life has been pretty great without AI. You don’t feel you’re missing out on anything. You see possible negative consequences:
AI could cost people their jobs.
Many countries are building huge data centers for AI, wasting energy and emitting CO2 for no clear value.
The pace of innovation has been fast the last years, there’s no good reason to accelerate anymore.
But even if you are super skeptical about AI benefits, you should be able to agree to these two statements:
1. “AI is something computers just couldn’t do a few years ago. We can’t know the implications.”
2. “We live in a world where some countries actively try to destroy our democracies and the way we are living. These countries are experimenting with AI.”
So, I personally get all the skepticism and do not disagree. Yeah, totally unregulated AI will very likely have dire consequences for society. I’m advocating for experimenting with it to understand its uses and limitations. Only then can we make an informed decision about how to regulate it for the good of society. Ignoring it is a very dangerous path.
Let me illustrate with a concrete example. Robotics is benefiting heavily from AI. Why exactly will be the topic of an an upcoming newsletter. Only a few years ago, robots looked mostly like this:
But Tesla has a bad reputation of announcing things and not shipping them, you’re right.
Watch this video of Chinese military wolve robots equipped with rifles. The prototypes shown are still manually controlled. The video feels very disconnected, showing these killing machines with a playful and happy vibe. They are probably showing off old tech, so they likely have more advanced systems.
She treats the wolves like cute animals, I don't know why. Definitely not hilarious to watch. (Source: Youtube.com)
Look, I’m not a fan of the military, quite the opposite. I refused to go to Bundeswehr for a reason. History teaches us that societies not adopting new technologies face heavy penalties. Read up on colonization or the treatment of Native Americans for background. A key factor in maintaining peace in Europe over the last 80 years was a level technological playing field.
So, what’s holding Germany back from experimenting with AI? I'm betting on a lack of the right environments for experimentation, so I’m building one of these environments. More to come in the next issues!
This newsletter started out on 3D printing. I you haven't had any contact with it, you should, it's great. Here's the most interesting and funniest projects I saw last week.
This is the best use case of the magnetic levitation kit I've seen so far. Very tempted to finally give in and buy it. It can even glow!
This is my weekly newsletter about new technology hypes in general and AI in specific. Feel free to forward this mail to people who should read it. If this mail was forwarded to you, please subscribe here.
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