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Technology in context

Technology can be a useful servant, however is not so safe in the rôle of master.

In thinking, there is a balance between reason and emotion. If one dominates, the outcome(s) may not be so functional.

When emotion dominates, the thinker tends to come to conclusion(s) they are comfortable with and trust, yet are irrational.

When reason dominates, the thinker tends to omit context which has a significant impact on the conclusion(s), so it/they tend to be irrelevant and/or inapplicable.

For what you may call an illustrative (or extreme) example of that, late last year a person asked a pattern-matching AI how rapidly they should turn an egg while frying it... and the response amounted to “slowly, so you don’t risk breaking it.”

Spot the complete absence of relevant context.

My own personal experience with an “intelligent” car (that I drove for a fortnight last month while my usual car was being repaired), was that having it automatically brake (in wet conditions!) when the vehicle in front braked was kind of hazardous.

One wet day with strong, gusty winds, while driving as far from the kerb as the vehicle would allow without auto-correcting me towards it, the wind suddenly stopped, and the car immediately auto-corrected 1m towards the kerb — so if I had driven in the centre of the lane where it had “wanted” to be, it would have driven over the kerb and through a power pole.

Rest assured that your own ability to come to conclusions will never be eclipsed by pattern-matching AI.

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