Digital Mines and Canaries

something about sensing

I often find the best approach when faced with a puzzle is to step back from it for a while, reframe it, and reintroduce myself to it.

So it is with AI. AI has a science fiction element to it. It reminds me in some ways, of the reaction to the Orson Welles “War of the Worlds” broadcast:

On Halloween morning, 1938, Orson Welles awoke to find himself the most talked about man in America. The night before, Welles and his Mercury Theatre on the Air had performed a radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, converting the 40-year-old novel into fake news bulletins describing a Martian invasion of New Jersey. Some listeners mistook those bulletins for the real thing, and their anxious phone calls to police, newspaper offices, and radio stations convinced many journalists that the show had caused nationwide hysteria. By the next morning, the 23-year-old Welles’s face and name were on the front pages of newspapers coast-to-coast, along with headlines about the mass panic his CBS broadcast had allegedly inspired.

Smithsonian Magazine

Our reactions to it, individually and collectively, range from War-of-the-Worlds-level hysteria to scepticism to indifference. There’s an interesting article in this week’s Economist (paywall) that suggests the investment hype is, well, overhyped.

This means that, underneath all this, something serious is probably happening quietly and quickly, and we would do well to be aware of it.

The thought, shared with Steve Done, took us to an idea of canaries in the coal mine, those whose sensitivity to noxious gases that might kill us made them invaluable in the mines, where otherwise discovery might be made with our sudden expiration.

It feels like many of our businesses are like mines as we go ever deeper to find another seam of whatever it is we sell. Rather than recognise an exhausted seam, we use new tools to dig ever deeper, even as we recognise the danger it may expose us or our clients to.

Working with AI requires canaries.

“I was perplexed as to what the usefulness of any of the arts might be, with the possible exception of interior decoration. The most positive notion I could come up with was what I call the canary-in-the-coal-mine theory of the arts. This theory argues that artists are useful to society because they are so sensitive. They are supersensitive. They keel over like canaries in coal mines filled with poison gas, long before more robust types realize that any danger is there.”

― Kurt Vonnegut, Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons

In digging ever deeper and faster to feed our bottom line, we will undoubtedly use AI recklessly, deliberately or accidentally.

Its potential is pervasive, covering every aspect of our activity, and, like gas, we may not recognise our exposure to it until something goes suddenly bang.

There are tools that use AI to police AI, like Quillbot (I put my text so far into it, and I’m pleased to say I do not appear to be a robot.)

Tools like this though are more like the Davey Lamp, technologically advanced for the time, and provided light as well as the presence of explosive gases. Canaries though, were far more sensitive to carbon monoxide, which would kill before we knew it was there.

Conversations are our canaries.

When it comes to our work, it's not carbon monoxide that threatens us, it’s bullshit.

“Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about. Thus the production of bullshit is stimulated whenever a person’s obligations or opportunities to speak about some topic exceed his knowledge of the facts that are relevant to that topic.
― Harry G. Frankfurt, On Bullshit

AI is a powerful tool, and I am an enthusiast, even as I recognise its ability to bullshit without blushing. Detecting bullshit requires two things; people who understand the domain under consideration and open conversation. Bullshit hides easily in plain sight when being searched for but bubbles inevitably to the surface when exposed to the non-performative conversation of the artist and the artisan.

When we are busy being efficient, bullshit escapes attention, carried along on a wave of enthusiasm for productivity, and the reluctance of those being judged on it to call it out.

When exposed to curiosity though, it cannot hide so easily. When efficiency and productivity are not on the agenda, our intuition and instincts come into play.

One of the better-known examples was highlighted in Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Blink” (extract here) when a Kouros statue being bought by the John Paul Getty Museum was approved by technical experts but later found to be counterfeit based on the feelings and senses of artists.

What AI offers us is that principle on steroids.

We need canaries. We need conversations.