The description two days ago of how AI works in the computer world is to drive home the point we are making about our own AI or what we call subconscious mind.
At the beginning we told our subconscious mind what to do and how to watch over us, and it does it so well that we started relying on it.
The challenge for me is that some of the instructions we gave it earlier in our lives are no longer relevant.
When we told our subconscious that we were confined to the slums, it was our understanding at that time. We no longer want to live in the slum.
When we heard of marriage challenges and told our AI to keep us single, it was for a point in time. N5ow we want to get married and our AI is holding us back, breaking some of the useful connections that we are making to get married.
Here we are in a training on how to do this and that and this supercomputer AI reminds us that is not for us.
I used to think that my subconscious was a robot I built that I could give instructions to, but now I am finding out that it is an AI and it makes its own decisions irrespective of my conscious wants and desires.
We cannot do without our subconscious or AI. On several occasions, this AI has been our saving grace.
We have worked into a place and even without thinking, our AI sounded a warning that something was wrong. Some of that warning wasn’t specifically something that we taught our AI, but because the AI can utilize the basic rules we gave it to make decisions, even when we were not consciously aware of danger, our AI alerted us of the presence of danger.
However, like the fears expressed by the likes of Elon Musk about computer AIs, how much control over our lives do we want to cede to our subconscious.
As in AI, can this subconscious get the better of us and harm us in any way?
At a certain age you gave your AI a script for your alcohol consumption, because you enjoyed alcohol; and besides every time you drank it, your confidence was sky high; you sang on stage effortlessly.
Now, your AI has developed several control codes by which you drink alcohol without even thinking and it is damaging your livers. You want to stop, but you do not just seem able to stop.
Growing up, petty crimes was the formula with which you got on. Your AI has now perfected how to do this for you and you can engage in petty crimes even without thinking about it. The positive side of our AI is that it is the reason we are hired to do the work we do.
The vacancy says 20 years sales experience. If your AI has been taught well and has directed you well this past 20 years in selling, why do you want to ditch it?
In his book “Blink, thinking without thinking” Malcom Gladwell explains how we think without thinking. He narrates several stories of people who just by looking at something reached the exact conclusion within seconds.
A conclusion an amateur reached only after months of examining the same object. Gladwell goes on to tell the story of policemen who shot a black victim because their AI was preloaded with prejudice, a decision which a policeman with a different programming will not reach.
He explains that in times of pressure, we do not use our analytical conscious mind. A policeman who needs to make a decision in the fraction of a second whether to shoot at a suspect is not likely going to have the time to analyse whether or not he should shoot.
In a fraction of a second his AI takes control and makes the decision for him.
I remember asking the American Sport Psychologist, Garret Kraemer what he will do if he was confronted by a particular challenge?
His answer shocked me. He said he wouldn’t know what he will do because at the moment he confronts the challenge several options could come up and he wouldn’t even be able to tell me which of them he would choose in the very moment.
For once, I felt he avoided answering my question, but over time, since that experience, I have observed in my own life that I have made decisions in the spur of the moment which afterward I would not consider in my rational conscious mind.
Today, I have humbled myself and I now pray even in matters I once was 100% sure what I will do. Where it is a conversation, I not only pray for myself but also for the person with whom I am going to have the conversation.
To be continued.
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“How We Experience Life” is a series written by Egnr Tunde Ekpekurede.