You think, therefore you think you are...
#1 ...and as you said, AI is creating one heck of a buzz worldwide. It's got everyone more worked up than climate change, the Ukraine-Russia war, and Israel's Palestine-bashing put together.
#2 The problem is that no one seems to know what exactly AI is, let alone whether it's a good thing, a bad thing or a value-neutral thing, and what to do about it.
#1 Right. So, people are doing what they always do when they've got something they don't know what to do about — they're holding international conferences about AI to frame laws and rules about how to deal with it.
#2 True.
But it's more than likely that the laws and rules framed at these conferences, not to mention the agendas of the conferences themselves, might well be put together by AI, which sort of defeats the purpose. Like having potential home invaders set up your anti-home invader security system.
#1 It is a Catch-22 situation. Or even a compounded Catch-44 one.
But where did the problem start? What was the thin edge of the wedge, the beginning of the slippery slope, the snowball that rolled down to become an avalanche? Could it have been that Descartes chap?
#2 Descartes? The guy who's called the Father of Modern Western Philosophy?
#1 Same dude. He's said to have locked himself up in a room where he began by doubting the existence of everything, including himself. Which is when he had his supposedly Eureka! moment that if he were doubting that he existed, then there must be someone there to doubt that he existed.
And he came up with what must be the best one-liner in the history of standup: I think, therefore I am. Which sounds even more hep in Latin: Cogito, ergo sum.
#2 Now that you mention it, it does have a familiar ring. But what does it mean,
