Should I use AI or my search engine to find out stuff on the internet?
Short Answer (no doubt, you already guessed it): It depends. Like most questions, there are pros and cons for each option. Of late, I have been using both methods to get different perspectives as each presents some information that the other does not. I like the fact that I already know how to use Google to search and I like that a ChatBot remembers past conversations. For more details, check out: https://discuss.techlore.tech/t/chatbot-vs-search-engine-to-find-information/7874.
Google has this to say about boosting the rankings of its search engine results, “Advertisers, partners or anyone with a financial relationship with Google gains no special advantages or treatment in Search results. They are not given ranking boosts. If they have issues, they must use the same free tools and resources that we provide to everyone. All our advertising and sponsored content is clearly labeled (e.g. “Ad”; “Sponsored”) so that they are early labeled (e.g. “Ad”; “Sponsored”) so that they are easily distinguishable from Search results.”
Although the above statement may be true, I have no knowledge of how it is implemented or enforced but my own experience over a long period of time is that most all of my Google searches are not displayed “Ad’ or “Sponsored”. Also, there is the simple fact that Google makes its money by selling ad space. This would lead a critic to assume that some exchange of favor was involved.
As a quick refresher: While a search sngine (such as Edge or Bing, which is usually bundled into the operating system of your computer if it happens to be a Microsoft product) or Google Search, if it’s a Google (now Alphabet) product, the user currently is pretty much able to use their search engine of choice regardless of their choice of Operating System. (Spoiler alert: Too late — most all of the extant Search Engines incorporate AI already.)
Before actually sitting down to write, I wondered how many columns I had written on this subject and was surprised to find about 600, give or take, and more than half focused on the societal issues raised by Artificial Intelligence or AI. You may remember from a previous column that a wag’s (i.e. joker) definition was “Artificial Intelligence is like Artificial Insemination but not nearly as satisfying.” In fact, there’s a grain of truth in that anecdote in that the term “Artificial” carries only negative connotations.
For example, I found these synonyms at from Oxford Language website: “feigned, insincere, false, affected, mannered, unnatural, stilted, contrived, pretended, put-on, exaggerated, actorly, overdone, overripe, forced”,…as well as many, many others.
In fact, in the Friday, August 15 edition of the P-R, the “Blondie” comic strip illustrates the disdain for the term “artificial” by showing Dagwood sitting in his favorite eatery and on the TV the announcer is saying, “Robots can cook burgers using Artificial Intelligence” and Dagwood responding, “You’d never do that, would ya?” to the Chef who responds: ”No way, I’ve already got artificial ketchup, artificial sweeteners, artificial coloring, artificial flavors, and artificial ingredients slathered on Real Mystery Meat!”
So, it’s clear what we mean by the word, “artificial” but we can’t seem to all agree on a precise definition of what “intelligence” means. That does not imply that we just don’t know what having intelligence entails, it means we’re still trying to agree on a single definition that most scientists across many disciplines can be said to agree upon (“Is a spark plug more intelligent than a washing machine?”)
As a starting point, I asked my CoPilot AI the following question: “What are the similarities and differences between the terms “sentience,” “consciousness and “intelligence” and it responded:
“Sentience, consciousness, and intelligence are three related yet distinct concepts. Sentience is the capacity to experience sensations and emotions, like pleasure and pain, with a focus on subjective experiences. Consciousness is the state of being aware and able to think about one’s own existence, thoughts, and surroundings, emphasizing self-awareness and internal observation. Intelligence involves acquiring knowledge, learning from experiences, solving problems, and adapting to new situations, highlighting cognitive abilities and reasoning.
These concepts are interconnected: a conscious being is usually sentient, and intelligence can enhance consciousness and sentience. They’re crucial in AI discussions, especially around the ethical creation of sentient or conscious machines. But they differ: sentience is about subjective experiences, consciousness is about self-awareness, and intelligence is about cognitive skills. Not all sentient beings are highly intelligent, and not all intelligent beings are sentient or conscious like humans.”
Evidence of the growth of AI can easily be found by using Google Ngram, which displays the frequency of user-selected words or phrases (ngrams) in a graph that shows how often those phrases have occurred in a corpus made up of the scanned books available in Google Books: https://tinyurl.com/mpu7bcs8
It clearly shows that the usage of the term “Artificial Intelligence” and its abbreviation “AI ”is growing exponentially since about 2015 as seen in the Google Ngram chart which shows the usage over a range of years of any word like “AI”, relative to any other word in its corpus, which contains Artificial intelligence as a specialty within computer science that is concerned with creating systems that can replicate human intelligence by learning by themselves and problem-solving abilities. They do this by taking in a myriad of data, processing it, and learning from their past in order to streamline and improve in the future. Conversely, a “dumb” computer program would need human assistance in order to fix bugs and improve the performance of the computation process.
The idea of “artificial intelligence” goes back thousands of years, to ancient philosophers concerning questions of life and death. In ancient times, inventors made things called “automatons” which were mechanical and moved independently of human intervention. The word “automaton” comes from ancient Greek, and means “acting of one’s own will.”
One of the earliest records of an automaton comes from 400 BCE and refers to a mechanical pigeon created by a friend of the philosopher Plato. Many years later, one of the most famous automatons was created by Leonardo da Vinci around the year 1495.
So while the idea of a machine being able to function on its own is ancient, for the purposes of this article, we’re going to focus on the 20th century, when engineers and scientists began to make strides toward our modern-day AI.
How about the Future?
Well, we can never entirely predict the future. However, many leading experts talk about the possible futures of AI, so we can make educated guesses. We can expect to see further adoption of AI by businesses of all sizes, changes in the workforce as more automation eliminates and creates jobs in equal measure, more robotics, helping us deal with climate change, as well unintended consequences such as accelerating climate change due to the fact that an AI running on any computer will need more hardware resulting in these chips generating more heat which, in turn, will cause more damage to our existing climate. The lure of progress is often tarnished by unforeseen circumstances.
— Dr. Stewart A. Denenberg is an emeritus professor of computer science at Plattsburgh State, retiring recently after 30 years there. Before that, he worked as a technical writer, programmer and consultant to the U.S. Navy and private Industry. Send comments and suggestions to his blog at www.tec-soc.blogspot.com, where there is additional text and links. He can also be reached at denenbsa@gmail.com.
