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Artificial intelligence and its daemons
AI is going to transform society. What does this mean for housing associations and councils? James Tickell, a partner at Campbell Tickell, takes a look at the big picture
James Tickell is a partner at Campbell Tickell
Years ago, I read out loud to my children the extraordinary His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman. It left Harry Potter in the shade for them, and for me.
In the books, everyone had a ‘dæmon’, a kind of familiar spirit that took the form of an animal reflecting their personality. The dæmon was strongly linked to the person. If that link was severed, both would become lost, haunted and confused. People talked to their own dæmons, which could also interact with those of others.
My children and I all chose our own spirit dæmons. From memory, there was a cat, a dolphin and a jaguar. Or was it a stag beetle? The dæmon idea wasn’t completely new, of course. As a child, I had an imaginary friend called Richard who lived at the bottom of the garden, and my brother’s friend was called Paving Stone.
Spirit animals occur in many indigenous belief systems. Medieval witches were thought to have familiar animals to assist them with their spells and curses. The notion of the personal dæmon has a long history, sometimes with sinister undertones.
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When I (briefly) mislaid my mobile the other day, I realised with a start that it was a kind of dæmon. I did feel somewhat unsettled without it – a main source of news, amusement, communication, travel information and so much more besides. My first mobile could only manage calls and texts; the current version has more computing power than NASA’s moon missions of the 60s and 70s. And that rate of progress is being maintained.
How will our dæmons look in the coming era of artificial intelligence (AI)? I’m not sure that I’m entirely reassured by the answers.
Take your mobile phone as a starting point: Siri is just for starters, from the Stone Age of AI. Surely in five or 10 years’ time, it will be possible to have an intelligent conversation on pretty much any subject with your phone? Or to ask it to perform any one of a range of tasks? Maybe write a letter, advise on emotional matters, play a game, write a book, deal with HMRC, plan and book a holiday, you name it.
“This brave new world would surely make today’s mobile phone addiction look like an easily manageable habit. If ever cut off from their dæmon, the next generation would be lost indeed”
Companies will have their own dæmonic legions, too – just remember the annoying Microsoft paperclip! And, of course, you could delegate your dæmon to chat with those of friends and report back on what they were all up to.
It would make sense to give your individual dæmon a name, maybe in a virtual version of a christening ceremony. And why not a shape too, whether a spirit animal or a humanoid; or even a paperclip? First of all, it would need to be screen presence, but in a few years’ time, you could probably add a moving hologram of the chosen entity. An embedded brain chip would make communication easier still, but that would be a few more years off for a wider roll-out.
This may all sound well and good to you – multi-skilled personal assistants, coaches and confidants all round, although perhaps without the brain chips. But at the very least, this brave new world would surely make today’s mobile phone addiction look like an easily manageable habit. If ever cut off from their dæmon, the next generation would be lost indeed, drifting untethered and isolated in mental space, howling at the moon.
The potentially malign role of ruthless corporations and totalitarian governments hardly bears thinking about. A propaganda-free dæmon may not be available in many countries, while the price of an ad-free version might be prohibitive for many elsewhere. The tinfoil-hat brigade may just have a point about global mind-control conspiracies.
And what if the dæmon had its own ‘issues’ or simply got hacked? We just seen ChatGPT have the virtual version of a mental breakdown, spouting gibberish in a mixture of languages in response to routine queries, and nobody really knows why this happened.
Here’s an example of its hallucinations: “Muchas gracias for your understanding, y l’ll ensure we’re being as crystal-clear como l’eau from now on. So, to have that make up por the switch in all-encompassing kook, let’s step back y dive discretely back towards more about the gene o week of nail jellium.”
As they say, you couldn’t make it up. And anyway, it should be ‘discreetly’, not ‘discretely’!
“Invest time and energy in planning how to make best future use of AI, rather than letting it use you”
To make things worse, the system has also been accused by users of laziness and ‘sassiness’. I’m not sure that I will really be able to cope with a deluded, lazy and cheeky mobile phone, let alone a dæmon, even if it were just a tad anxious or pessimistic, that could really spoil your day, week or year.
So, we stand at a dangerous moment in human history. Like the Industrial Revolution and the Age of the Internet, AI has amazing possibilities, but also some more dystopian ones in fast pursuit. The coming change is at least as momentous as the earlier two, maybe more so. We know for sure that we can fully trust neither governments nor large corporations. Ensuring the ethics of AI sounds like a good idea, but is likely to be bypassed. I suspect that we shall need to fight hard for a truly human future.
My advice to readers? Think very carefully about what this all means for you, your job, your organisation and your customers. Invest time and energy in planning how to make best future use of AI, rather than letting it use you. Read the terms and conditions of your apps. Protect your children from mobile phone addiction. Collaborate with and listen to others, for many hands make light work. And, most important of all, be ready to exorcise your personal dæmons.
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