“Don’t people realize that it is humans that are programming these things! Yes, imperfect, biased humans, with their own agenda not perfectly logical, independent minds, operating for the good of humanity!! How can people be so stupid!”, Sherlock wasn’t finished.
“And look at this one. ‘AI finds missing plane.’ For God’s sake it used a damned human designed tracking system that it was programmed on by humans. Humans would have, and did, find the missing plane. This obsession with AI is getting absurd!”
“Sherlock, please watch your blood pressure,” said Watson.
“No worries there, Watson, I have AI on my wrist protecting my health! I’m sure AI is keeping me alive! I mean AI is responsible for everything, even my breathing! Can you imagine what this would have been like as the industrial revolution developed technology?”
“’New technology creates the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for Mark Twain!’ Oh my God, he used a typewriter, which was clearly instrumental in the author’s creation. A typewriter creates an amazing fictional character!”
Watson noted that Sherlock was getting into a vengeful mood and needed to calm down before the impending interviews.
“You seem to be very angry and irritated by all the attention artificial intelligence is getting,” said Watson. “AI for an eye, Bluetooth for a tooth?” he opined.
“Okay, doctor. Let me take a few minutes to breathe and calm down and we can get going,” Holmes responded.
Earl, Ron and Mary had been sitting at a nearby table and couldn’t help but hear Sherlock’s tirade. As Holmes tried to relax Earl reopened the discussion.
“You seem pretty mad at technology in general and AI in particular,” commented Earl. “Are you conscious of all the AI possibilities?”
Holmes responded. “Consciousness. Here we are talking about the possibility of artificial consciousness, and we don’t even understand our own consciousness. We don’t know the full extent of the mind-body.”
“Have you heard about Daniel Kish?” asked Watson to Earl as well as Mary and Ron.
Mary knew but Earl and Ron did not know to whom Watson was referring, prompting him to continue.
“Daniel became blind before he was two. He actually had his eyes removed at the age of thirteen months because of cancer. For some reason he started making clicking sounds with his tongue. And before long he had learned the skill of echolocation, an amazing skill usually attributed to dolphins and bats. Daniel could translate the echoes created by the environment to his clicking into visual representation of the world around him, allowing him to do things like ride a bike, even though he was blind. When researchers studied his brain, they found that the visual areas of his brain that were normally dormant in people with no eyes, had connected to the auditory areas of his brain, to create this amazing skill. He has now taught this skill to more than five hundred people.”
Earl and Ron were amazed at the idea of human echolocation. And then Watson posed another question.
“How many digits can people remember?” asked Watson.
“I know the answer to that one,” said Mary. “It’s between 5 and 9, the number seven plus or minus two, as established by the psychologist George Miller in the 1950s.”
Watson acknowledged that was correct for the average person but then asked whether anyone knew what the record was for digit recall.
“20?” suggested Ron.
“No, it’s more like 1000,” said Earl.
There was a sarcastic mumble at Earl’s absurd suggestion. How could anyone remember a thousand numbers in the right order?
“The answer is,” said Watson slowly, “….100,000.”
After the gasps of amazement slowly faded, Watson provided more information.
“A Japanese gentleman Akira Haraguchi achieved that feat, which took him 16 hours, in 2006.”
Mary questioned Watson’s facts, reminding him that Haraguchi was actually using a system to calculate the numbers rather than remembering them. She didn’t deny it was an amazing feat, but claimed this wasn't memorization.
Watson responded. “Okay, how about this one. Have you heard of Timur Gareyev? He’s a Grand Master Chess Champion. In 2016, he played 48 games of chess simultaneously while blindfolded. It took him nineteen hours and he did it while riding an exercise bike. He won 35, drew 7 and lost 6.”
“I don’t think we humans really appreciate what we are capable of. The mind-body is an incredible computer. It’s ability to change and adapt, neuroplasticity, is incredible and we probably haven’t even scratched the surface yet. In combination with technology, it is almost unfathomable to imagine what we will be able to do in the years, decades, and centuries ahead,” concluded Dr. Watson.
“However, the key phrase there is in combination with technology,” said Sherlock. “We need to focus on human capabilities, and motives, as much, if not more, than we do on the development of artificial intelligence.”
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