A heretical approach to the sense and nonsense of using artificial intelligence
When someone asks me, with a challenging undertone, whether my job won‘t soon be replaced by artificial intelligence (AI), I shake my head and reply: „No AI will ever be able to do what I can.“
This isn’t meant to be technophobic, vain, or even self-important, but simply an expression of a deep inner conviction. AI can already do a lot, and quickly. AI can replace humans where they are too expensive and therefore inefficient relative to the task at hand. Thus, the use of AI is simply a continuation of every company‘s efforts to be competitive and maximize its own profits. It fits into a long line of developments that began with the invention of the wheel and extends through the division of labor, industrialization, and automation to the present day.
The Natural Legacy of Industrialization
The euphoria of industry triggered by these profound developments was, however, always accompanied (and often hushed up behind closed doors) by the cheers of company executives: „Hooray, we can once again lay off some of our perpetually ailing, generally lazy, incessantly complaining ‚human capital‘ and replace it with machines that do the job faster at a fraction of the cost!“
This is precisely where the magic of AI lies: it does some things faster and cheaper than the whiny human who did them until now – but not necessarily better. Some things should remain in human hands and pose a risk of companies losing market share. For example, if someone calls their bank and has a problem that the telephone AI doesn‘t understand, the frustration is enough to drive them to switch to an alternative provider, simply because, in all its technological backwardness, the latter still puts „real people“ on the phone. Then it might not even matter that the person you‘re speaking to is barely understandable due to their awful accent – because at least they‘re a human being and therefore on equal footing. In this way, perceived backwardness becomes a competitive advantage.
AI vs. MI in the Military Context
In a technical context, however, where interpersonal interaction is often unnecessary, the algorithm becomes a lifesaver. As a decision-making aid in the face of an overwhelming flood of data, as in modern military scenarios, human intelligence (HI) regularly reaches its capacity limits and operational processing limits. However, in the future, the focus will not be on reducing human labor, but rather on redistributing it; the in Germany so-called „swivel chair interface“ will disappear in favor of highly qualified planning, operating, and maintenance personnel who deploy large numbers of autonomous systems. This offers a particular opportunity for countries with smaller populations to gain military clout.
But beware: Especially in the military sphere, where the element of surprise is crucial in battles and wars, the predictability of one algorithm can be dangerous for another. However, the individual human being, with their gut feeling, their hunches, their moods, and the sum total of their irrationalities, will never be fully captured by any AI. Therefore, in the future, they will not be the last resort, but rather a trump card that armed forces, companies, and societies must recognize and learn to play to their advantage.
Conclusion
This text was created exclusively using HI because it would have taken far too long with AI, and the result would have been inferior. This, in turn, is due to the fact that creating prompts for this non-recurring task would have been too extensive and inefficient compared to writing these lines „by hand“ based on years of experience. Therefore, the author is not worried about impending unemployment due to the spread of AI.
