Man, the Horse and the Age of Artificial Intelligence

My journey with artificial intelligence, particularly as it concerns building businesses, writing books, creating software engines and establishing new systems, can be understood through the relationship between a man and a horse.

Why do human beings ride horses?

They can walk. They can run. So why?

The answer is therein.

The horse extends human capacity. It allows a man to travel farther, move faster, carry more and cross terrain that would otherwise exhaust his natural strength. It enables him to accomplish in hours what might have taken him days.

The horse does not diminish the man. Properly understood, trained and mastered, it multiplies him.

But does the horse take the rider wherever it pleases?

Ought he to allow it?

God forbid.

That would be a failure, and worse, a betrayal of self, purpose and calling.

It would be a tragic waste of life: surrendering a man’s destination to the vacuous instincts of the horse, allowing it to carry him wherever it pleases while he sits astride simply because he can.

What is a man without his calling?

What is a man without a sense of destination and purpose?

He may be moving, but towards what?

He may be travelling quickly, but who determined the road?

He may sit upon great power, but if he does not govern it, then the power beneath him governs him.

No.

The horse must be trained.

And the rider must also be trained.

The rider must learn how the horse thinks, how it responds, what drives it, what frightens it and how its strength may be directed. He must learn when to loosen the reins, when to pull them, when to turn, when to advance and when to stop.

An untrained rider may possess a powerful horse and still be unable to reach his destination. Worse still, he may be carried rapidly towards a destination that was never his.

This is how I understand my relationship with artificial intelligence.

My present responsibility is to learn how to ride the horse better.

It is to understand the tools, train the systems and build the engines that can carry me towards the destinations I have already discerned.

The aim is not merely to possess artificial intelligence.

It is not merely to say that I use AI.

It is to develop and govern artificial intelligence that understands where I want to go and is capable of helping to take me there.

It must serve my purpose, not substitute for it.

It must strengthen my calling, not define it.

It must expand my capacity without becoming the source of my identity, judgment or direction.

The vehicle may not always be a horse. It may sometimes be a camel, built for endurance across a different kind of terrain.

The point is not loyalty to one tool.

The point is understanding the journey, understanding the terrain, selecting the right instrument and learning to master it sufficiently to fulfil the assignment.

Learn the horse.

Learn the camel.

Learn the tools.

Learn the systems.

Learn them better.

This is my base.

This is where I stake my position in this age, at this moment and in the annals of history.

I will not remain a typewriter-age mind in the age of artificial intelligence.

Just as no serious person should have remained intellectually imprisoned in the typewriter age after the arrival of the internet, I will not remain frozen in an earlier age while the instruments available for fulfilling my calling continue to advance.

Remaining behind is not necessarily integrity.

It is not automatically faithfulness to values.

It is not always wisdom, caution or depth.

Sometimes it is simply fear dressed as principle.

Sometimes it is surrender before the discomfort of change.

Sometimes it is a lacklustre pursuit of excellence in one’s calling.

Sometimes it is stupidity.

Sometimes it is sheer, pathetic apathy.

Sometimes it is an unholy mixture of them all.

It is giving up and then finding respectable language with which to defend the surrender.

It is consenting to be left behind in the dust of one’s fear of the new.

It is calling discomfort danger.

It is remaining frozen in time while history moves forward.

It is eventually finding oneself alone in the abandoned basement of obsolete methods, surrounded by the relics of yesterday’s competence and comforted only by the smug belief that resistance itself was a virtue.

There is no nobility in refusing the tools required to fulfil an assignment more effectively.

There is no integrity in doing poorly what one has been called to do excellently.

There is no faithfulness in refusing to increase one’s capacity when greater capacity has become available.

But neither is there wisdom in embracing every new tool without discernment.

One man refuses to mount the horse and is left behind.

Another mounts the horse, releases the reins and allows it to carry him wherever it pleases.

Both have failed.

The first failed to recognise and use the capacity available to him.

The second surrendered his direction to the instrument.

One feared the horse.

The other became subject to it.

The sons of Issachar were distinguished because they understood the times and knew what Israel ought to do.

Their wisdom was not merely that they noticed change.

Everyone can notice change.

Their distinction was that they understood the meaning of the moment and knew how to respond to it appropriately.

The adversary of the Issachar spirit is not technology itself.

It is ignorance of the times.

It is fear of necessary change.

It is pride that refuses to learn.

It is apathy that watches history move and does nothing.

It is resistance without discernment.

It is surrender without government.

It is either refusing the horse entirely or mounting it and allowing it to determine the destination.

It is possible to preserve eternal values while continually improving the instruments through which those values are expressed.

Methods may develop without the mandate being corrupted.

Tools may change without truth changing.

Capacity may increase without identity being surrendered.

Artificial intelligence is not my master.

It is not my calling.

It is not my source.

It is an instrument.

I remain the rider.

The vision determines the destination.

Wisdom selects the horse.

Discipline learns to ride it.

Governance holds the reins.

Purpose commands the journey.

And excellence uses its strength to travel farther than human effort alone could have carried me.