As a “Gen-Xer” who came of age during the Cold War and has seen most of the “Terminator” movies multiple times, my opinion on the risks and rewards of “artificial intelligence” is predictably apocalyptic.
To recap, “Skynet,” the AI system created to control the world’s nuclear missile network, becomes sentient and unsurprisingly judges humanity a threat to machine supremacy. Skynet empties the silos and purges the world in thermonuclear fire. Arnold Schwarzenegger gets paid zillions to keep coming back.
While my queasy unease with AI is rooted in the “Terminator” franchise, it is best expressed by a line from actor Jeff Goldblum’s character in “Jurassic Park,” another blockbuster series of cautionary tales about science run amok.
“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should (bring back dinosaurs for fun and profit).”
The more I learn about AI, the less confident I am that the “tech bros” running its warp-speed development give much thought to unintended consequences.
So when Sunday Times Staff Writer Jeff Horvath reported that senior Lackawanna County judges consulted an AI model before ruling against Commissioner Bill Gaughan and the county’s petition to remove the Democratic Party Machine from the process of replacing departed Commissioner Matt McGloin, this professional alarmist took to his keyboard and started pushing panic buttons.
I soon stumbled across Bailey Simrell, owner of Just Right Place, a Scranton-based web design, software development and digital marketing studio. At 26, Simrell is a member of “Gen. Z” and scary smart. He’s an expert on AI and exceptionally patient with analog geezers like me. Simrell has also seen “The Terminator” and “Jurassic Park” movies, so we had at least some cultural references in common.
“So, why is AI not Skynet?” I asked, expecting to be unsettled by his answer.
“Well, that’s a good question,” Simrell said. “I think that ultimately, there’s definitely a Skynet nature to a lot of these modern AI systems. … You hear a lot lately about ‘artificial general intelligence’, or AGI, and it’s this idea that there’s going to be a point very soon where the machines are much smarter than we are.
“And what I always tell people is that we need to face the reality that already exists, which is that they are already smarter than us. … A lot of the state-of-the-art models, OpenAI, Google, etc., can pass the bar exam, pass the MCAT exam as well as write general poetry and do data science and mathematics. There’s no human at the general intelligence level these systems already operate at.”
I was unsettled. Simrell continued.
“From a jobs perspective, I think we have some real problems in the workforce,” he said. “You can see it just in what I do. Software engineering has totally changed in the last couple of years. It used to be a great career, now it’s not really a safe path if you’re a junior engineer. … There’s a lot of jobs that are being taken by AI, and that’s a reality.
“But we’ve seen shifts like this before, historically, many times, like the Industrial Revolution, where transformative technologies exponentially changed the way in which we produce goods or services. It massively impacts the job market, and there’s going to be pains, as well as many profits, but I think the ‘Skynet effect’ is definitely the scary thing.”
Simrell listed hyper- realistic “Deep Fake” videos and images, increased automation of newsgathering and algorithm-driven manipulation of information as other key risks of AI, but made strong arguments for its advantages, too. Complex problems that once required the time and talents of multiple humans and buckets of money can cheaply be solved in seconds using AI.
Simrell made news a while back by creating scranton.ai, a free “chatbot” that offers access to city public records. It was a DIY approach to a problem that – using traditional methods – might have taken months and money to solve.
“I had zoning issues that I had no idea how to solve and didn’t have enough money to pay an attorney,” he said. “Through scranton.ai, I actually ended up finding there were over 20 years of missing zoning hearing board meeting minutes.”
The city initially resisted Simrell’s push to produce documents that didn’t exist, but eventually relented and moved to reproduce the records. Now, Simrell said citizens and some city employees use scranton.ai to get answers efficiently.
“Most things the government has to deal with are very basic administrative things… where half of the job is just finding a needle in a haystack, and that’s what AI is exceptionally good at,” he said. “That was why I built Scranton AI.”
Like any “revolutionary tool” Simrell said AI can be used for good or exploited for evil.
“I definitely think there’s a ‘Skynet thing’ going on, and I don’t think it can be ignored,” he said. “At the same time … I think that there’s many ways AI can work with you and aid us humans. Like Steve Jobs always used to say, ‘Computers are bicycles for the mind.’ ”
That’s a comforting quip, but AI is a self-driving bicycle that could throw humanity over its handlebars into extinction. In Gaughan and the county’s case, it could support the supremacy of the Democratic Party Machine, which emptied its silos on Gaughan because he voted for an unpopular but necessary property tax increase.
Gaughan and the county fired back with a filing asking the state Supreme Court to hear their appeal, which is pending in Commonwealth Court. Among their objections: the judges’ use of AI.
It seems unlikely seasoned, senior county judges used AI to reach their decision on the petition, but it gives me the creeps that Skynet even was in the room. The political melodrama surrounding McGloin’s replacement was cringy enough without a cameo by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
CHRIS KELLY, the Times-Tribune columnist, will be back. Contact the writer: ckelly@scrantontimes.com; @cjkink on X; Chris Kelly, The Times-Tribune on Facebook.