My mum is 77 and from a generation who didn't grow up with tech and so is not a digital native.
All she hears about AI (other than from me) is what she sees in the mainstream media, which is predominantly negative, and fear based due to the media's bias towards sensationalised headlines in the attention-grabbing economy. e.g AI will end the world.
She is fearful and asked me whether I thought AI was good or bad and whether it would make life better or worse.
We live in a duality. All ancient traditions tell us that life is a mix of good and bad:
Heaven vs. Hell (Christianity
Islam, Judaism)
Yin vs. Yang (Chinese philosophy)
Dharma vs. Adharma (Hinduism)
Harmony vs. Disruption
(Native American cultures)
Ma'at vs. Isfet (Ancient Egyptian)
Light vs. Darkness (Gnosticism)
I don’t think AI changes that. AI will bring both good and bad in equal measure, however due to the power of AI, I think the impact will be greater on both sides.
In some ways whether you are an AI optimist or and AI pessimist, it shouldn’t change our response.
As an optimist I want to learn all I can about AI. How it can be used, what are its flaws, what is it good at, what are its limitations and how it will develop in the future.
If I was a pessimist and thought AI was going to end the world, it should be even more important to learn all I could about this threat. How it can be used, what are its flaws, what is it good at, what are its limitations and how it will develop in the future.
In order to bring balance to what my mum hears and calm her fears, I've started to put together a page for her to read on positive impacts of AI (all the good news stories). I also think this will be useful when training staff (and students) on AI in September as they will have been exposed to the same fear based media.
The link to the ‘Positive AI’ page here is below:
In the words of Karl Jung, "In all chaos,there is a cosmos in all disorder a secret order", we should try to find balance in the disruptions AI may bring.
