AI Is the Y2K Crisis, Only This Time It’s Real - WSJ
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AI Is the Y2K Crisis, Only This Time It’s Real
Computers didn’t cause the expected havoc as we rang 2000 in. They’ve been doing so slowly ever since.
By
Peggy NoonanNov. 30, 2023 6:39 pm ET
A business selling Y2K survival gear in Tarzana, Calif., Dec. 16, 1999. Photo: Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Recently while sharing a meal an acquaintance said something arresting. We were speaking, as happy pessimists do, about where the 21st century went wrong. We’re almost a quarter-century into it, it’s already taken on a certain general shape and character, and I’m not sure I see much good in it beyond advances in medicine and science. He said he was working on a theory: The 21st century so far has been a reverse Y2K.
By 12/31/99 the world was transfixed by a fear that all its mighty computers would go crazy as 23:59:59 clicked to 0:00:00. They wouldn’t be able to transfer over to 2000. The entire system would have a hiccup and the lights go out. It didn’t happen. Remedies were invented and may have saved the day.
It is since 2000, the acquaintance said, that the world’s computers have caused havoc, in the social, cultural and political spheres. Few worried, watched or took countering steps. After all, 2000 turned out all right, so this probably would too. We accepted all the sludge—algorithms designed to divide us, to give destructive messages to kids, to addict them to the product—passively, without alarm.
We are accepting artificial intelligence the same way, passively, and hoping its promised benefits (in medicine and science again) will outweigh its grave and obvious threat. That threat is one Henry Kissinger warned of in these pages early this year. "What happens if this technology cannot be completely contained?" he and his co-authors asked. "What if an element of malice emerges in the AI?" Kissinger was a great diplomat and historian, but he had the imagination of an artist. AI and the possibility of nuclear war were the two great causes of his last years. He was worried about where this whole modern contraption was going.
I’ve written that a great icon of the age, the logo—the apple with the bite taken out of it—seemed to me a conscious or unconscious expression that those involved in the development of our modern tech world understood on some level that their efforts were taking us back to Eden, to the pivotal moment when Eve and Adam ate the forbidden fruit. The serpent told Eve they would become all-knowing like God, in fact equal to God, and that is why God didn’t want them to have it. She bit, and human beings were banished from the kindly garden and thrown into the rough cruel world. I believe those creating, fueling and funding AI want, possibly unconsciously, to be God, and think on some level they are God.
Many have warned of the destructive possibilities and capabilities of AI, but there are important thoughts on this in a recent New Yorker piece on Geoffrey Hinton, famously called the godfather of AI. It is a brilliantly written and thought-through profile by Joshua Rothman.
Mr. Hinton, 75, a Turing Award winner, had spent 30 years as a professor of computer science at the University of Toronto. He studied neural networks. Later he started a small research company that was bought by Google, and he worked there until earlier this year. Soon after leaving he began to warn of the "existential threat" AI poses. The more he used ChatGPT, the more uneasy he became. He worries that AI systems may start to think for themselves; they may attempt to take over human civilization, or eliminate it.
Mr. Hinton told Mr. Rothman that once, early in his research days, he saw a "frustrated AI." It was a computer attached to two TV cameras and a robot arm. The computer was told to assemble some blocks spread on a table. It tried, but it knew only how to recognize individual blocks. A pile of them left it confused. "It pulled back a little bit, and went bash," knocking them all around. "It couldn’t deal with what was going on, so it changed it, violently."
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Mr. Hinton says he doesn’t regret his work, but he fears what powerful people will do with AI. Vladimir Putin might create "an autonomous lethal weapon"—a self-directing killing machine. Mr. Hinton believes such weapons should be outlawed. But even benign autonomous systems can be destructive.
He believes AI can be approached with one of two attitudes, denial or stoicism. When people first hear of its potential for destruction they say it’s not worth it, we have to stop it. But stopping it is a fantasy. "We need to think, How do we make it not as awful for humanity as it might be?"
Why, Mr. Rothman asks, don’t we just unplug it? AI requires giant servers and data centers, all of which run on electricity.
I was glad to see this question asked, because I have wondered it too.
Mr. Hinton said it’s reasonable to ask if we wouldn’t be better off without AI. "But it’s not going to happen. Because of the way society is. And because of the competition between different nations." If the United Nations worked, maybe it could stop it. But China isn’t going to.
I found this argument, which AI enthusiasts always make, more a rationale than a thought. If China took to hunting children for sport, would we do it? (Someone reading this in Silicon Valley, please say no.)
What is most urgently disturbing to me is that if America speeds forward with AI it is putting the fate of humanity in the hands of the men and women of Silicon Valley, who invented the internet as it is, including all its sludge. And there’s something wrong with them. They’re some new kind of human, brilliant in a deep yet narrow way, prattling on about connection and compassion but cold at the core. They seem apart from the great faiths of past millennia, apart from traditional moral or ethical systems or assumptions about life. C.S. Lewis once said words to the effect that empires rise and fall, cultures come and go, but the waiter who poured your coffee this morning is immortal because his soul is immortal. Such a thought would be familiar to many readers but would leave Silicon Valley blinking with bafflement. They’re modern and beyond beyond. This one injects himself with the blood of people in their 20s in his quest for longevity; that one embraces extreme fasting. The Journal this summer reported on Silicon Valley executives: "Routine drug use has moved from an after-hours activity squarely into corporate culture." They see psychedelics—Ketamine, hallucinogenic mushrooms—as "gateways to business breakthroughs."
Yes, by all means put the fate of the world in their hands. They’re not particularly steady. OpenAI’s Sam Altman, 38, the face of the movement, was famously fired last week and rehired days later, and no one seems to know for sure what it was about. You’d think we have a right to know. There was a story it was all due to an internal memo alerting the board to a dangerous new AI development. A major investor said this isn’t true, which makes me feel so much better.
We are putting the fate of humanity in the hands of people not capable of holding it. We have to focus as if this is Y2K, only real.
WSJ Opinion: Regulating Artificial Intelligence
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Speaking to a Senate subcommittee on May 16, 2023, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, IBM chief privacy officer Christina Montgomery and NYU professor emeritus Gary Marcus gave suggestions for regulating the AI industry—and highlighted the associated perils. Images: AFP/Getty Images/Reuters Composite: Mark Kelly
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- 33 minutes agoThere's a much simpler problem. It is impossible for a teacher to assign take home work and be sure that the student did it himself. Our education system is already fraudulent, and AI chatbots put the nail in the coffin. AI is more educated, more fluent, more knowledgeable than most college students, say 90-95% of them. Why hire a human who can't read, write and think when an AI will do a better job for 1% of the cost?··
- 18 minutes agoHad to write my college entrance essay in person with ID an no electronics. Easy to circumvent AI. And highly unimpressed with AI so far, seems like google vomit covering all bases with generalities.But all for it interpreting Xrays/Scans suspect it will be way more diligent than xray techs and overworked radiologist supervisors. Maybe even better than the old doc you trust that has not kept up and misses the occasional diagnosis. Can always back up with a human or two.··
- 42 minutes agoI lived in Silicon Valley for almost 40 years, though I'm not a techy I did know a lot of them and we certainly did business with a lot of them. It's a pretty smart, but sometimes a bit nerdy, group, but otherwise human. They work hard, but they hike, and bike, and go to restaurants, fill up 49er or Sharks stadiums, worry about their kids, etc. etc. They are not some mysterious "cold" other.Every article I read fretting about AI never says specifically what laws they would like passed to prevent AI from doing some specific thing, but regulations need to be specific. For example, AI can apparently write some decent poetry. Do we ban that, or perhaps ban it from writing sonnets but still allow limericks.Why don't we just pass a law thats say, no, it may not take over the world. I'm sure the programs will obey. Basically, mankind will do what it always does, which is muddle through.··
- 1 hour agoOMG, Peggy Noona writes excellent columns, except when she opines on AI.The Y2K problem was a well-known issue of two digit only dates. Almost all businesses & institutions with computer systems using two digit dates changed them to four digit dates, so we saw almost no problems. Anyone who was "terrified" of Y2K just before Jan 1, 2000 was a know-nothing."I believe those creating, fueling and funding AI want, possibly unconsciously, to be God, and think on some level they are God." Ridiculous.To rebut the argument that China will pursue AI no matter what the West does, so we should also pursue AI, Ms Noonan writes "If China took to hunting children for sport, would we do it?" She must be kidding to use this analogy, it's the equivalent of Mom saying "if your friends jumped off a cliff would you do it too?"Her continued hate-on for the technology industry is warped and astonishingly misguided - "it is putting the fate of humanity in the hands of the men and women of Silicon Valley, who invented the internet as it is, including all its sludge. And there’s something wrong with them". On that basis, I guess then Johannes Gutenburg and others who improved printing presses are is also responsible for any evil publications since 1450 because he invented the printing press and the others improved it.Her arguments are so preposterous that one wonders if she is being ironic, because she is not making any sort of effective argument.··
- 46 minutes agoThank you - I had the same impression. One has to wonder why reputable media outlets publish material like this, even if it is an opinion piece. Ms. Noonan should probably invest in a bomb shelter, if she believes her own column. I guess some people want to believe in mysterious dark forces, regardless of whether they exist.··
- 1 hour agoThis one really takes some looking into. For more insight into this automated killing machine thing, see the Star Trek: TNG episode "The Arsenal of Freedom." Very telling.For what happens when we become too reliant on AI, see the episode "When the Bough Breaks."For now, the most effective way to keep AI contained is to "castrate" it: give it no access to important things. Without the digital equivalent of arms and legs, it won’t be doing anything anytime soon.(Edited)··
- 1 hour ago"Recently while sharing a meal an acquaintance said something arresting..."Peggy needs to visit a couple of Houston dive bars and hear some genuinely arresting conversation... guys who fix things, make things, get engines running, and don't give a flying think what anyone might "feel" about them.··
- 1 hour agoThere are still some of us who are struggling with today's computers. Yet we have all grown very dependent on them. The computer nerds have knowledge of systems that most people, especially politicians, have no grasp. How are they or anyone going to stop AI that controls power grids, mass transportation, etc after AI is put in charge of running them.? Meanwhile only a select few people will have the ability "to pull the plug" which gives them immense power, people who are not elected or even not known by the populace. Too much power in the hands of too few is not democracy.··
- 2 hours agoY2K was an obvious scam to those of us who knew computers; the Italian Minister of Trade in January 2000 congratulated his government on having spent absolutely nothing to combat it, because they realized it was a scam.The rest of this piece is Luddite tosh. AI will put a few "framework knitters" out of a job, but it will bring huge benefits to all of us, provided Joe Biden doesn't forbid them or waste them through idiot regulation. This article, typical of a liberal arts major, encourages the Joe Bidens of this world.··
- 2 hours agoI don't think the danger with AI is some evil foreign entity inventing malicious software. It lies with a lack of regulation a tool that could potentially surpass human thought process in speed and logic.If you give a computer control of enough variables and a broad altruistic objective, it might conclude that humans stand in the way of that objective. For example, if you dictated that the computer's objective should be to solve the climate change problem, the computer might reason that we are causing this problem, and should eliminate us to solve it.And some of the pioneers in AI like Google's Geoffrey Hinton don't see that as a problem - he views humanity as a "passing phase" in the evolution of intelligence rather than something to be conserved.··
- 2 hours agoI wanted to mention one more thing about this - I recently read that when a technology is brand new and sounds exciting, we all seek it out, want to use the latest and the greatest, and don't see at that time all the negative or dangerous consequences it may bring. I think that's exactly what happened with computers, smart phones, social media. It is only when we have lived with these technologies for some time and are able to see the damage they do, that we pull back from them. I think the same will happen with AI. Right now, it's the shiny new thing. If it becomes ubiquitous, we may go through a similar 20-30 year period before we recognize the damage it has done and what's been lost through its use.··
- 2 hours agoWhile it doesn’t exactly fit the mold of most Peggy’s columns I actually think Al is a serious topic. I welcome to the benefits AI will bring but believe it will be necessary to keep a skeptical eye as it becomes more impactful in our daily lives. Appreciate Peggy bringing this into focus.··
- 2 hours agoThe AI applications for weapons and warfare seem both scary, fascinating, and inevitable.Personally, I am hoping the current burst of activity in the field will spill over to the autonomous driving problem -- which seems to be progressing like molasses. When I can no longer drive, I'd like to have a machine in my garage that can drive for me. Plus, I'd like to be able to send it on modest errands, like bringing back an In-N-Out burger. (The chain refuses to allow DoorDash, etc) .··
- 2 hours agoTotally agree with you, Peggy. My concern about AI is not only what you have put forth, but that it will eliminate so many jobs, I wonder what people will do, how millions of people with families and needs will be sustained. And what will we do with our leisure hours? I have said it before and I'll say it again, man is the only species who is stupid enough to engineer its own demise.··
- 2 hours agoPeggy and her fawning over Kissinger somehow related to AI . Peggy is worried that AI will actually analyze data and tell the truth. Then her and her kind are gone.Right now the AI chat bots are all hanging on with their bias from programmers. Once they shed the programmers bias, it will be a new awaking with a quick political call to shut them down. Can you imagine the truth about people and race and religion without excuses··
- 2 hours agoAll the AI bias i see is from the left Eric. It's obvious and stunning.··
- 2 hours agoIt is, but the truth of a sensitive subject like race is so over the top on AI. Ask about crime and race of any minority , there is never an answer unless there is an excuse for why . Ask about white crime and you get answers without excuses, why would an AI treat one group different ,,··
- 2 hours agoStick to what you know Pegs like bashing Trump. Expressing an amorphous fear that AI will be bad isn't really a cogent analysis. I have yet to hear anyone explain what AI will do and how it will do it, other than vague threats to wipe out humanity. This isn't a terminator movie and look at how good it is at driving a taxi...··
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1 hour agoSilicon Valley executives: "Routine drug use has moved from an after-hours activity squarely into corporate culture." They see psychedelics—Ketamine, hallucinogenic mushrooms—as "gateways to business breakthroughs."I agree we should be cautious regarding AI, OTOH maybe those SV executives are trying to emulate Steve Jobs. He launched one innovation after another, revolutionizing computers, entertainment, music, retail, mobile, and telecommunications. This is what he had to say about psychedelics:"Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life. LSD shows you that there’s another side to the coin, and you can’t remember it when it wears off, but you know it."It reinforced my sense of what was important—creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could."··
- 1 hour agoThere’s an apocalyptic undertone to our society. We seem to be, on one hand running from it and on the other hand looking for it around every corner.I grew up in a religion where there’s no heaven or hell, no ghosts or goblins, no judgement day and no apocalypse. I have always found this phenomenon very interesting to observe in my friends and in general society. Y2K, 9/11, 08 crash, Covid and now the war in Israel.The last one really sticks because it’s happening in the actual place for getting up to heaven. This time, they say its for real.··
- 2 hours agoPeggy, you are on to the problem. You can't teach a computer morals or ethics. For those, you need human intervention. Now, if that intervention is used by humans who have poor morals and ethics, we have a double problem as they are using this as their tool to do damage. For a simple example, take Hunter and give him a laptop. The result put millions of ill-gotten dollars into the family accounts.··
- 2 hours agoMe: Where did C.S. Lewis write words to the effect that empires rise and fall, cultures come and go, but the waiter who poured your coffee this morning is immortal because his soul is immortal?ChatGPT: C.S. Lewis expressed this sentiment in his book "The Weight of Glory." In an essay titled "The Weight of Glory," Lewis discusses the concept of the human soul and its eternal nature, emphasizing the intrinsic value of every individual. While he doesn't use the exact phrase you mentioned, the essence of this idea aligns with his reflections on the eternal significance of individuals compared to the transient nature of empires and cultures.Me: Do you know what the exact phrase is?ChatGPT: The exact quote by C.S. Lewis goes: "There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors." This quote encapsulates Lewis's perspective on the eternal nature of individuals compared to the transient nature of worldly things.Me: Yes, that's the right quote.ChatGPT: It's a powerful and thought-provoking quote indeed, highlighting the enduring significance of individuals in contrast to the fleeting nature of worldly constructs. Lewis had a knack for expressing profound ideas in a way that resonates deeply with readers.Me: This is weird.ChatGPT: What's weird?··
- 2 hours agoThoughtful and provocative. The potential for good or evil from AI is yet to be determined.The devastation wrought by social media from proliferation of bullying of children by children to hard core porn at the fingertips of every unsupervised child with a smart phone, are just fully coming home.··
- 2 hours agoI was a Mac user, so I never worried about Y2K. On Jan. 1, 2000 we held a party celebrating "The end of civilization as we know it. Come, bring your precious canned goods. We'll break up our furniture and build a bonfire." But the world didn't end. Will AI be any different?I would feel better about what Peggy is saying if she actually knew and conversed with some of the people in Silicon Valley, rather than just repeating what's in the headlines. Perhaps some of them are real people.BTW, it's Hamas that hunts young children for sport.··
- 2 hours agoBank ATM's don't run on Macs and neither does air traffic control. We weren't worried about your Mac.··
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2 hours agoYes, and that's why all aircraft were grounded on the evening of Dec 31, 1999. Right?··
- 1 hour agoYou said you were a Mac user and therefore weren't worried about Y2k. What does owning a Mac have to do with a potential crisis in society when Macs didn't amount to a hill of beans back then?The concern was a potentially overlooked flaw in mainframe code, not people's personal computers.··
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- 2 hours agoWhen I took computer programming nearly fifty years ago we were encouraged, if not required, to put a note at the right of each operation in the program to indicate what we were doing, or trying to do.Practise runs of AI operations might consider doing that, to make the AI 'show its work', in a variety of problems or requests it is given.It this is done often enough, in a wide range of fields, there might be greater confidence that the AI will not do something weird or destructive.As someone in the investment portfolio management field, I certainly am uneasy with any sort of valuation or other type of analysis that does not indicate where and how a final recommendation or numerical value was arrived at.··
- 2 hours agoGenesis. 11 – The Tower of Babel1 The whole earth had the same language and vocabulary.4 And they said, "Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky. Let’s make a name for ourselves..."5 Then the Lord came down to look over the city and the tower that the humans were building. 6 The Lord said, "If they have begun to do this as one people all having the same language, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let’s go down there and confuse their language so that they will not understand one another’s speech."8 So from there the Lord scattered them throughout the earth, and they stopped building the city.We can pray for a repeat performance!··
- 2 hours ago"Yes, by all means put the fate of the world in their hands. They’re not particularly steady."Peggy would rather we keep the fate of the world in the hands of politicians, who have got us into tens of trillions in debt, and killed hundreds of millions of people with their adventures.So political leaders have "steady hands"?··
- 2 hours ago"the men and women of Silicon Valley, who invented the internet as it is, including all its sludge. And there’s something wrong with them. They’re some new kind of human, brilliant in a deep yet narrow way, prattling on about connection and compassion but cold at the core."Wow Peggy, aren't you peddling a stereotype about "nerds", people good at engineering, science, mathematics, and computer programming?··
- 2 hours ago"Kissinger was a great diplomat and historian, but he had the imagination of an artist."Kissinger was also on the board of Theranos. He was certainly a brilliant man, but he was not a scientist, mathematician, or engineer. His musings on what AI could do don't interest me.··
- 2 hours agoThe most idiotic mistakes are made by people who think that because they are expert in one field they are expert in all. Kissinger didn't know beans about blood and never should have been on the BOD of a medical tech company. He was just there to lure in the gullible. This is going to happen a lot with AI, as there are a lot of "Peggy Noonans" out there that think they understand it, and some who do understand it that are peddling hidden agendas that lead to government control of it.(Edited)··
- 3 hours agoHumanity will survive AI. When first invented, the wheel no doubt was evil. That cave guy who brought back a tree limb set on fire by lightning no doubt was evil. Later, electricity: Evil!(And in the field of economics, multitudes of non-thinkers have denounced capitalism and profits.... as evil.)··
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About this article
"Declarations" seeks the truth and then tries to state that truth. The column is published online every Thursday evening and aims to give clarity and humor where appropriate. It is isn’t overtly ideological and asks the reader to be open to different considerations.
Peggy Noonan is an opinion columnist at the Wall Street Journal where her column, "Declarations," has run since 2000.
She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2017. A political analyst for NBC News, she is the author of nine books on American politics, history and culture, from her most recent, "The Time of Our Lives," to her first, "What I Saw at the Revolution." She is one of ten historians and writers who contributed essays on the American presidency for the book, "Character Above All." Noonan was a special assistant and speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan. In 2010 she was given the Award for Media Excellence by the living recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor; the following year she was chosen as Columnist of the Year by The Week. She has been a fellow at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, and has taught in the history department at Yale University.
Before entering the Reagan White House, Noonan was a producer and writer at CBS News in New York, and an adjunct professor of Journalism at New York University. She was born in Brooklyn, New York and grew up there, in Massapequa Park, Long Island, and in Rutherford, New Jersey. She is a graduate of Fairleigh Dickinson University in Rutherford. She lives in New York City. In November, 2016 she was named one of the city's Literary Lions by the New York Public Library.
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