Madden Mischief

While many of us are still getting our feet wet in adopting artificial intelligence, some Silicon leaders are now urging us to slow down its development before it goes rogue and kill us.     

Could AI noticeably affect the routine daily lives and work schedules of human beings?  Could one day AI make us all behave more like ants? 

Consider for a moment that smallest creature on the planet, but without ants in your pants.  Take your time to study ant behavior calmly and carefully.  Observe how orchestrally they dispose of food particles we might drop on the floor. 

Watch how a swarm of industrially busy ants go to town on those itsy-bitsy pieces, which they’ll break into even tinier parts, each one carried off to some sanctuary below, perhaps for a picnic.

What brought them out?  Was it their acute sense of smell?  But ants have no noses!  

Do they have GPS systems flying over their anthills?  I doubt it.

Or was it their antennae?  Those are the multi-purpose detective sensory tools they have developed to smell, taste, touch, navigate, communicate and detect even the slightest crumb droppings? 

That’s probably the answer.  Their AI is that astute antennae that tipped them off.

So, will our AI give us humans a much more advanced form of antenna?  Will it propel us to spring immediately into action when we sense we’re near something sweet or enriching, opportunistic or disastrous? 

Perhaps with AI we’ll get the incentive to act, to venture further out, to capture just as ants do after explosions of crumbs dropping stir their appetites. 

Look how quickly ants assemble entire brigades to come right out into the open to begin orderly examining, collecting and then transporting what had so wonderfully dropped into their laps.

Could this be a primitive form of antificial intelligence that alerted them to spring so spritely into such concerted ant action?

As humans forge faster, further and more furiously into AI, could we be on a collision course on a much higher level by mimicking ants?

Besides a downside, I’m wondering if there could also be a political side to these ANTics and if so, to which party ants are aligned?

Politically, I see them operate in such an orderly and purposeful fashion, so industrious and project focused on building and preserving a richly edible economy, I doubt if they’re Democrats. 

Yet I don’t see them erecting mammoth memorials to themselves or acting ICE ant-agent enough to be Republicans either, so I’m not sure which political side ants crawl on. So, let’s just label them INDEPENDANTS.

Still, one thing about ants making them seem so humanlike is that they’re such chivalrously brave little critters, just like in a vastly bigger way is our President.   

Here I am standing tall, hovering over them like a twin tower on 9/11, and they just continue about their business as if I’m not even there. Then soon as they’re done, disappear.

This scenario makes me wonder whether we’ll be in full control of artificial intelligence or one day will this masterful AI take charge of us?

Will it propel us all to robotically carry out whatever jobs we’re assigned before returning to our respective families, whom one day we might call our colonies? 

Could one day AI make colonies of us humans all acting ant-like as this?  Will one day, thanks to AI the only difference between us humans and ants will be how much taller we all are?

Then there’s an even darker side to what some believe could happen if AI keeps developing at the current lightning-fast pace. Some astute scientists predict there’s a 10 percent chance AI will kill us all.

Yet I’m more worried that if we’re not careful, artificial intelligence could lead all humans to one day having to work around the clock not for money or fame, but just for food.  Just as ants do!

Still, AI is super powerful. And if we’re going to continue as the world’s leading and most powerful country on earth, we’d better incorporate AI while learning all we can about its downsides, so it doesn’t lead us all off that ultimate, yet shiny cliff.  

Knowing we’re in a race to develop AI, Tom Madden believes we should at least drive more carefully and keep testing and looking for trouble spots so it ultimately benefits, not bites us.  Still, as Trump reminds us, we must know we’re still in a race with China in developing it.  Madden, together with his daughter Adrienne Mazzone, are managing TransMedia Group, the PR firm he started when he left NBC.  Still, he’s curious how quickly ants respond and do whatever it is they come out to do, then just as quickly disappear.  He sees a story there, albeit one that’s ant sized, yet hopefully not predictive.