Not quite a native Ripley Countian - she attended only her last year of high school in Doniphan though she taught in the R-1 system for 32 years - Teresa (Pearson) Lee delights in surprising readers and herself with anecdotal observations of life in general. Maybe you can blame her St.Louis roots for a quirky humor and some slightly-askewed opinions, but never doubt she writes from the heart.

Collywobbles

Posted Tuesday, September 5, 2023, at 10:48 PM

The collywobbles are settling into my brain. I find myself holding my head in my hands at the mention of Artificial Intelligence (AI), then burying my skull between my elbows when my mind can’t figure out which escape route to take NOT to hear more about it.

AI is part of EVERYTHING: my car, phone and TV; my doctor’s visits and vacation planning; drive-thru fast food orders and paying bills; scanning for discounts and placing orders at sit-down eateries, and tons more I’m so accustomed to I can’t recall and tons and tons more I don’t even know about!

Information bombards news and entertainment and my dinner conversations with warnings and infinite pros and cons. The vast extraordinary list of functions it can perform is mind-boggling. The what-ifs are awesome, global, problem-solving dreams or dark, dismal, despair-producing nightmares. My thoughts are beginning to acknowledge the blurring of the division between fake and real. It’s discombobulating!

Now and then I have a teeny-tiny breakthrough in understanding a minute aspect of AI and then I am smacked by the realization that its ramifications in ordinary life are exponentially multiplying. I contemplate either running away to the boonies of Canada to live a Mother Earth News kind of life or having a couple stiff drinks.

There are articles out there now - by the scientific gurus among us - that we must be alert for the signs of AI developing consciousness! WHAT?!

The neuroscientist gurus among us - the ones who probe living, non-mechanical brains - are still trying to figure out how consciousness works in us humans. (You remember - creatures who breathe and supposedly reason with natural intelligence).

Our race seems to be running away from it! The news overflows with examples of specimens of our species exhibiting behaviors that make it seem like conscious thought is disappearing at that exponentially multiplying rate mentioned earlier. Are we going to take a spot on the endangered species list?

I wouldn’t make it in the boonies. Another drink, please.