There is a date coming.  I don’t know precisely when, but it is soon.  Maybe not this year; maybe not for a decade.  Maybe a Wednesday; maybe not.  I can’t put a specific date to the date.  I just know that it is coming.  It is the date when human intelligence reaches its zenith.  It sounds like something that should be celebrated.  In fact, it is the exact opposite.

Human intelligence has always grown.  Unlike share prices or Conservative support, it has always been a sure bet that collective human intelligence will grow.  It has been like property prices or global temperatures since the 1990s.  But, I think that growth is finite, and I think it will peak soon.  And the reason why?  Because of the rise of artificial intelligence.

I am not suggesting that AI will replace human intelligence because AI, at best, can only replicate the database of human intelligence already available to it.  However, what I fear it will do is to atrophy human intelligence by removing the incentive to learn.  Without a drive to be creative and innovative, human intelligence will simply dwindle and, with it, so will artificial intelligence.

The more reliant humans have become on technology, the less they have become critical thinkers.  In a modest way, it started with the calculator––probably even with the abacus––resulting in greater innumeracy; then the internet rendered learned facts practically redundant; now AI threatens original thought and creativity.

If any example of this atrophy of human intelligence is required, step forward Linda McMahon, United States Secretary of Education, the person in charge of the US Department of Education and responsible for the education policy affecting 340 million American citizens.  At a recent conference discussing the subject of educational innovation, she persistently referred to artificial intelligence as A1 instead of AI.

Beggars belief.

It would be funny, if it wasn’t so scary.

© Simon Turner-Tree

The only thing artificial about Simon Turner-Tree is his Christmas tree.