An executive order has declared that the Article II branch of government is now to use the term “Super Intelligence” or “SI” in place of “artificial intelligence” and “AI”. Some name changes are wise, some are superfluous. Others reflect changing contemporary standards.
■ This one would be an exercise in frivolity if it weren’t such a bad idea psychologically. Human beings are susceptible to showing deference to authority. It’s a logical fallacy that’s hard to shake, even though there are times when the fallacy has proven deadly.
■ We also tend to find two other observations to be mainly true: First, that doing anything for the first time is also the hardest (in other words, almost everything gets easier with practice). Second, that getting started is often the hardest step.
■ It’s natural to look for guidance when trying something for the first time, just as it’s natural to unwittingly defer to authority in an unfamiliar field. But if we’ve been told that a tool is not just intelligent but “super-intelligent”, then it primes us to defer to its authority even more.
■ In such a situation, we run the very serious risk of never asking critical, analytical, thoughtful, probing, or skeptical questions at the outset of challenging new endeavors -- precisely the time when we most need to ask those questions. Start out on the wrong track, and every other effort risks going to waste.
■ There’s an additional hazard: That this deference to authority is compounded when our tools give us confident answers written in highly polished prose. Thoughtful, critical attitudes need to prevail, but it’s hard to engage that part of the brain when the automatically-generated answers look so complete and free of self-doubt.
■ A simple name change doesn’t always mean much, but sometimes it triggers habits and patterns of thought that we should be careful to detour. Uncovering right answers is great, but avoiding wrong ones is often vastly more important.