It's Artificial Versus First-Rate Intelligence

AI has not made deep inroads into Bertie's life except for how he searches for things online

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Not a day passes without Bertie reading some breathless reports on how artificial intelligence (AI) is going to change the world. To be honest, AI has not made deep inroads into Bertie's life except for how he searches for things online. But Bertie knows he is a borderline Luddite, so he tends to believe it when smart people tell him that AI is a game-changer.

To educate himself more on the AI revolution, Bertie attended a talk by a world-renowned expert whose forte is tracing the wide evolutionary arc of almost everything, including technology. The gentleman is quite persuasive and had the audience nodding in agreement when he said, "AI is different from other technologies. It is not a tool; it is an agent." By that he meant that AI was not just another weapon wielded by humans but that it was representing or replacing the human itself. "What places to bomb in Gaza was decided by AI and executed by humans. That is a role-reversal," the expert concluded. A scared Bertie could not bring himself to clap along with the fawning audience.