Have we created a new library of Alexandria? - And if so, where might that lead?

I remember exactly 4 telephone numbers;

• My mum’s.

• The mobile number of my ex who I was with for 10 years, 14 years ago.

• The one of my childhood home that I have not lived in for 22 years.

• The one of the Marbella cab company that provided me in many dire situations with loyal service. 22 years ago (and now very once in a while. They didn’t get worse, I just got better. ;)).

What do all of these numbers have in common? - They stem from a time before smartphones. I no longer dial numbers, I no longer need to remember them. I now have a list of names who I could call and in fairness often only message. My mind simply does not need to remember any more telephone numbers.

Our brains are hardwired to be lazy. Or well, let’s call it highly efficient. Poor things. Evolution has made us preserve energy to escape the big bad tiger, not wasting any resources. And we keep doing so. (https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/evolution-made-our-brains-lazy/)

My brain is already in love with AI - be it ChatGPT (haven’t used it at all for this article and goodness me is that hard work ;)), AI for making music or podcasts (I will get back to you on that one btw). Why? Because it has me thinking waaayyy less. My brain sits on its lazy chair, ready to run or hide or attack. No thinking.

Now, when I use AI to write, I have a decent base knowledge (understanding of or information about a subject that you get by experience or study, either known by one person or by people generally, according to the Cambridge Dictionary) and ask for sources that I check because at uni I was taught to pay a lot of attention to where the information comes from (Harvard’s view on the matter). But it would be so easy not to. It would be so easy to bang out information never checked, look like a master in everything and who on earth would ever even look it up…. Just like you are reading this now, others could be reading misleading information about the subject, poorly researched and with no real foundation. What if it was not just little old me writing but someone who actually has a proper following, an influencer, someone who people look up to and in whom’s word they trust. What if that information was then cited in newspapers and reached an even wider audience? (https://archive.nytimes.com/learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/11/how-do-you-know-if-what-you-read-online-is-true/)

THERE IS NO WAY OF KNOWING IF WHAT YOU ARE READING IS TRUE. Unless of course, you know the subject matter because you learned it. Old school. And are able to verify what is suggested to you by your little helper, AI. That applies not only to the content you generate with AI but also to everything else you read. We no longer know for sure what has been verified and what has not by a human being.

So the question is, are we effectively and progressively (shocker… the library of Alexandria did not just suddenly go up in smoke…) destroying a blanket knowledge in society by introducing AI and thereby taking away the need to actually know and rather just cite, blindly, what a new intelligence is creating. An intelligence that in time might have the ability to have its proper ambitions and strategies to reach them.

Now, you will say that Alexandria was never as important, as copies of the books had been made. But this is exactly the point. We are the collective copy of knowledge. Each and everyone of us takes information away with them out of their studies. When we start to be fooled into being able to allow our heads to be lazy by handing over knowledge sourcing to an artificial intelligence, why would our lazy heads even want to study?

I am by no means suggesting that we will stop going to school or uni but Ido think that we need to be very conscious of the importance of this. Collectively. The risk we are running into is that those of us that have the best adapted brains to survive are the first to be left behind. A new evolution lies ahead. Are we ready to overcome our instinct of being lazy and to keep checking, keep asking, keep learning.

In the future I see, we will have information vetted by specialist bodies that in turn will have to be checked for being impartial, trustworthy sources. The freedom of information sharing might exist but will no longer have any value since it will be a whole lot of muddled waters where truth and lie will be indistinguishable.

I love AI. But just as all other technology, it is not the tool that counts but what we make of it and to make the best of it, we will need to stick to our guns of knowledge whilst we create a brave new world, certainly with the use of AI.

Image from the Disney Pixar movie Wall-E; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLmuDmd9Ymk