My Turn: Why Artificial Intelligence should freak you out

I’ve been gazing into the future for years, and I’m a little freaked out.

Before us lies the horizon of Artificial Intelligence. Supposedly we want AI because it is going to revolutionize our work and make the world seamless, integrated and progressive. But are we creating a heaven on earth or digging our own virtual graves?

Perhaps check in with Sophia, the “hot AI robot,” who was jokingly asked recently if she wanted to destroy humans. "Okay, I will destroy humans," she replied.

And, please pass the computer chips: Google’s DeepMind AI AlphaGo bested the world’s best human Go player, Lee Se-dol of South Korea. At one point, DM was up 3-0. Lee clawed back to win the last game, and they nearly had a worldwide parade in celebration.

You see which way this is going

Simply put: If machines don’t need us, how do we co-exist after that happens?

I’m known as a futurist — someone who zigs when others zag — in my field as a learning experience, or LX, designer, which means I design innovative digital environments for learners.

In a recent essay, I suggested the future is a place that needs to be created by the many, not just the few.

But then I may be alone in the wilderness here. I have been throwing myself into the future for years and seeing what bounces back. Sometimes I like what I see. Sometimes I am freaked out.

AI is supposed to be the answer, but what if we don’t understand the question?

Let’s start with this: Throughout evolution, humankind has always evolved within the human brain. Even when my brain is daily bombarded with information, I retain my own singular thought-processing capacity. I alone decide what I invite into my domain.

Now, welcome to the speed of light, where all of that changes. We are closer every day to the moment of technology singularity, where artificial intelligence becomes recursive and plays a critical role in designing its own environments. Someday your coffeemaker will tell you how illogical you are this morning.

Mark that on your calendar, Hal. It’s going to be a big day. As early as 2030, some say, when machines surpass human capability to think and process information. When your job is gone because AI has been taught to think significantly faster than you do, you will feel way more than discomfort.

Pass me the gasoline. I need to put out a fire

Why should the idea of artificial intelligence be so unsettling?

Why not welcome the idea of familiarity with another intelligence, one that will enhance and expand our global community? Why should no less than Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates and Elon Musk warn us of its immense existential threat? Is AI our generation’s answer to the nuclear bomb, as Musk suggests?

Will we get 10 or so years down the road and say, as Robert Oppenheimer did, quoting the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”?

Why are the great minds of our time freaking us out like this?

As a newly minted “educational post-futurist,” my job is to look past the horizon. These are not abstract ideas to me — they are connected to the learners I work with every day. What I am talking about will alter the genetic makeup of the brain. Technology will become a shared experience between your thoughts and the construct of artificial intelligence that shares your conceptual space.

Next AI frontier: Your brain

If I look at my wrist, I see my Fitbit. This ever-more ubiquitous device relays granular, highly personal data about me to … someone, every minute of every day, waking or sleeping. Any honest discussion of ethics — and the permissions we afford to those who gather our data, sell us technology and create our learning environments — will raise essential questions.

Never have we had to do one potentially terrifying thing: share personas with a secondary sourcethat is not human. If artificial intelligence has a sense of persona, and you interact with it, that is the definition of shared persona —  and questions about this are critical. You are always influenced by persuasive design, whether you realize it or not. Any digital experience you participate in may be impeded by profit motive (Want to watch a video of David Bowie? Sorry, sit through this Tide commercial). If a digital persona has a hidden agenda, you may be participating in it without realizing it.

RELATED: Your TV may be watching you

People have been studying human behavior since the days of B.C.E. and then interpreting it for profit. Even with all the fancy strategies we employ to see how you use our websites, someone interprets your behavior and gives it meaning.

We are now taking it a step further, as we will no longer look “at” technology, but “through” it. It will be a part of how you see and recognize the world around you, and ultimately how you interpret it. Soon you will not just be wearing a device, but will have it implanted — and the amount of data that can be captured about you, both with and without your awareness, is almost unfathomable.

We are no longer alone

What happens when you are in an unconscious relationship with another intelligence?

As an evolutionary step, we go from using a technological tool to being in a persona-based relationship with an “other.”

When your thought processes are shared with algorithms that adapt to you and feed you information — and you make decisions, ever-more realistic and cunningly presented to you as authentic, based on this shared relationship — you are no longer your own person. You are a shared persona.

It blows my mind that we are not thinking or talking about the ramifications of this.

Myra Travinis a dual citizen living inBritish Columbiaand is the author of School of You, which stresses that learning is a tool of survival.