86. Machine Intelligence, Mental Health, and Humanity's Future with Peter McAllister
The Code: If your AI loses its mind, can it take meds?
What if the greatest threat posed by artificial intelligence isn’t that machines become evil—but that they inherit humanity’s flaws?
Peter McAllister, engineer, scientist turned technology manager joins me to talk about his debut novel The Code: If your AI loses its mind, can it take meds?, which sounds like a comedy, but is actually a science fiction thriller that began as dystopian fiction and now feels uncomfortably close to current events. Drawing on decades of experience working at the intersection of technology, business, and people, Peter shares his thoughts on the promises and dangers of AI, automation, corporate decision-making, and humanity’s tendency to embrace powerful technologies before fully understanding their consequences.
We discuss the AI boom, the disconnect between technology leaders and decision makers, the ethics of machine intelligence, and whether we may be creating the next intelligent species on Earth. We also explore nanotechnology, self-improving systems, unconscious bias in AI training, technological evolution, AI rights, and the possibility that our machine creations may one day judge us by the way we treated them.
In This Episode:
Kangaroos in your yard
Corporate ‘magic box’ thinking
Mining with nanotechnology
Human bias in training AI
The nature and consequence of self-aware non-humans
Mental health and what if AI inherits our issues?
Books of his we discuss: The Code: If your AI loses its mind, can it take meds?
In The Code, Peter McAllister proposes a frightening situation that is entirely plausible. An AI, following its programming to the letter, becomes bent on a path that will destroy humanity.
It’s interesting how the scenario in the book was a natural extrapolation of Peter’s own experiences in the mining industry and thinking how to make it more environmentally friendly, combined with his observations of corporate behaviour and the desire of managers to want to solve everything as quickly as possible using the newest, most trendy tool, whether it was required or not…
"We're seeing the senior executives, the CEOs, the CFOs going, 'AI's going to revolutionize our business.' And when you ask them how, they go, 'I don't know, but I want it now.' We're in that situation where people just don't know what the technology is and what it can do, but they're pushing that button over and over again."
"That's like saying, 'Take a jet engine, apply it to a skateboard, and give me a faster skateboard.' What they actually want is a way to get from A to B."
Corporations aren’t entirely to blame, however, and we talked some on the unspoken bargain that all members of humanity (at least in the developed world) have made in exchanging human lives for convenient technolgoy. One example is widespread use of the car, which results in millions of deaths per year just so we can get to where we want to go faster and more conveniently.
We never had the social discussion on what were acceptable casualties for that technology and, while some are bringing it up for AI data centres, it’s just as likely that this conversation will also be swept under the rug.
After all, how many of us think about the environmental cost for each AI request we make?
While it’s interesting to see how technology has shaped humans and human society, AI does something new in that regard. It holds a mirror up to ourselves. It forces us to look at how we are shaping this new technology and how AI can take on human characteristics due to the way it is trained.
This leads us to entirely new levels of responsibility in our interaction with technology. AI may be the first technology we’ve developed where we need to be cautious about its emotional and mental well-being.
Mental health issues feature strongly in The Code, as an expression of how our newest creations are able to take on both our strengths and our weaknesses. It can be incredibly challenging for anyone — and their loved ones — to manage something like schizophrenia. It could be challenging for the human race if a crucially important AI develops such an issue.
In addition, the issue of self-awareness has been prevelent almost since the Large Language Model AIs were released to the market. Both the use of AI to study animals, and the AIs themselves bring to the forefront the challenge of how do we treat other beings on the planet if we discover they are self-aware?
"There's a point in the book where the concept is flagged of: is Gene a slave? And if he's a slave, do we treat him the way we used to treat slaves, or do we treat him like a sentient being?"
These topics were fascinating to discuss and are vital to the future of humanity, technology, and in some cases, all life on this planet.
Peter McAllister
Peter is an engineer, scientist, turned technology manager who wants to share the stories that keep him awake at night. In his professional life, he works in IT where tools such as AI have become prevalent. This behind-the-scenes knowledge, along with his previous work at the intersection of technology, business, and people, puts him in a great position to speculate on the future. He lives outside of Melbourne with his wife, four cats and the kangaroos that visit them.
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