#Loaded question 1
'Between humans and chimpanzees, who is more capable?'
...
Most people think the answer is humans.
Some people, though, might say chimpanzees, as if they'd expected the twist.
"If the answer were obvious, why would anyone bother to ask the question?"
And the experimental result, just like some people had guessed, shows that "chimpanzees" are smarter. (Related reference)
How about it? Does it land?
...
Right.
The question itself is wrong in the first place.
Issue 1
The words "human" and "chimpanzee" (pronouns) are far too broad a category.
The speaker's hidden intent is already plainly visible in the question.
Issue 2
The test tool was built by humans (by highly educated adults, no less),
and the evaluation is also done by humans.
The criterion for "smart" (here, problem-solving ability) is also based on human biases (especially US-originated).
#Loaded questions 2, 3...
Questions similar to the above (loaded with bias and predetermined answers) include
Between Japanese people and Korean people, who is more dignified
Between Europeans and East Asians, who is smarter, etc.
#Good question 1
A fair contest - the Olympics is a good example.
Representatives of the same weight class compete in one game of taekwondo, another of judo, another of swimming, running, and so on,
their overall ranking is summed, and the competition isn't a one-off but is held continuously over a sustained period.
That could be a fair contest - a fair comparison.
Now, to the main point
We - and by "we" I mean the so-called educated folks - often find the keyword "AI vs. Human" in books and news.
Recently (in February of this year), there was even a broadcast on the theme A total of 200 million KRW invested! A one-month return showdown between human and stock-trading AI - what's the result? | AI vs Human (SBS broadcast)
Look closely and you can see how unreasonable and irrational a contest it is. Just as humans vary in species, age, sex, and education level, AI is also an extremely broad pronoun. (In fact, the contest above is really human:developer vs. human:investor, but...)
The human representative is Mahaseven (age 50), a master who turned 1 million KRW into 7 billion KRW.
The AI representative is Thinkpool's trading assistant RASSI (age 1, born November 2020). But... effectively the operators are Thinkpool's developers - and the real power behind the scenes is Thinkpool's CEO Kim Dong-jin.
Like the human/chimpanzee comparison, it's a contest between a 50-year-old veteran human and a 1-year-old, learning-based AI.
Comparisons or contests between pronouns like chimp vs. human, East vs. West, male vs. female, are grounded in the speaker's group's sense of superiority, prejudice, and discrimination. And within that group, the non-commonsense "common sense" manufactured by those with the loudest voices (so-called capitalists) only makes the in-group frame stronger. This is why I'm writing such a long-winded post over what looks like a trivial thing.
It may be content simply made for entertainment, but its ripple effects are anything but entertaining.
Conclusion
1. Conclusion on perception
AI is a digital entity capable of learning. Humans are analog entities capable of learning.
Just as we take it for granted that "humans" can't beat "carnivorous animals" in "nature,"
we have to accept that "humans" can't beat "trained AI" in "digital environments" (and offline has become substantially digital too).
Only then does a path to survival open up.
In ancient times, if humans had felt inferior to carnivores and tried to "fool themselves" or "fight on equal terms," Sapiens would have gone extinct.
Today, humanity shouldn't try to overcome its inferiority complex with self-deceptive mental victories - we need to build new tools or new frames.
2. Conclusion on the production and consumption of related content
1) In the beginning, humans made tools and tools made humans.
Nations that built strong weapons preserved their power by preventing other nations from building the same weapons.
2) And humans make culture, and culture makes humans.
That culture - so-called content - is expanding on the media side, starting from religion to Nobel prizes, education, journalism, documentaries, entertainment, variety shows, and more.
3) Today, humans make markets, and markets make humans.
As neoliberalism has spread, every tool and culture on Earth - inside the solar system - is being CRUD-ed (Create, read, update and delete) by capitalists.
What worries me personally is that before humanity can even respond to AI, humanity itself is already threatening human survival. More specifically, the average consumer (and producer) is already being bled dry by, or made dependent on, the capitalists who already hold the reins - the 20% of humanity with the privilege.
#Illustration-to-come: people playing musical chairs
#Illustration background: a room with a window (or park), 4 chairs, 5 people
#Illustration content: Person 1 occupying chair 3, Person 2 on chair 1, outside the door a robber (a wall about to fall)
#Illustration intent: people should use the chairs to keep the robber out (or to keep the wall from falling), but even while seeing the robber through the window, they're busy trying to keep (or seize) their own chair.
3. A question about the question
In daily life, there are just too many cases where the question itself is wrong.
And there are plenty of situations where there isn't even a question at all.
With forty right in front of me, still thirty-nine, as a way of waking myself up,
and for the me that keeps forgetting, I leave behind this long post for the first time in a while.
Hoping the fussiness of becoming an adult who doesn't forget how the "obvious" became obvious doesn't crumble~
That's it for today's brain-ramble.
P.S. After dinner, while doing the dishes, the weather outside looked so nice - should I ride my bike, or take a drive? I hesitated for an hour. Should I at least join some meetup? I installed the app, signed up, was about to write my introduction post when I noticed the five intro posts before mine were all men in their early forties - and spent another hour deleting the app. Fine, I'll just watch an AI lecture and code my trading system - and then a thought that came out of nowhere turned into an hour of writing this post. That's how a pre-forty guy ends up finally washing his hair and putting on clothes after half a precious day has passed. Right before I close the laptop: ah - life. Even this feels like a slice of life - and the thought that it's because of my age, or because I'm single, either way, unlike before it brings a "ha ha-" kind of feeling, and it actually reassures me.
