"Writing is a way to talk without being interrupted" – Jules Renaud
From Scrooge McDuck to HAL 9000: When Numbers Become Too Big to Imagine
From Scrooge McDuck’s mountains of money to HAL 9000’s artificial intelligence, a lifetime of watching numbers grow beyond imagination leads to one fascinating question: What happens when technology advances faster than our minds can comprehend?
When I was a little girl, a hundred dollars was a great deal of money. A thousand dollars was a fortune. A hundred thousand was practically unimaginable.
And then came the millionaires, the billionaires, and eventually the trillionaires.
Somewhere along the way, I gave up trying to picture all those zeroes and settled on a perfectly satisfactory mathematical expression: a gazillion.
Scrooge McDuck had his swimming pool filled with money. I had my imagination.
But now, at seventy-five, I’m being told that artificial intelligence could become a million times more powerful in just a few years. And suddenly, I find myself thinking less about Uncle Scrooge and more about HAL 9000.
Because I was there when Stanley Kubrick introduced us to a computer that could think, speak, reason—and decide that its human companions were expendable.
So perhaps the question isn’t whether AI will become a million times more powerful…
Perhaps it’s whether human beings can learn to understand and use that power without surrendering the qualities that make us human.
I started writing when I was seven, and my ultimate goal was to become a published author. I've partially satisfied this desire by keeping a journal for most of my life.
After graduating from Rutgers University, I worked in a large accounting firm as a knowledge manager, which honed my research skills on the newly developing internet.
The study of Natural Health and Hygiene has been a passion of mine for over 50 years and I have a particular interest in the connection between behavior and nutrition. This knowledge was immensely helpful during the time I cared for my mother at home until her death in 2016, when I discovered a relationship between ADHD and dementia.
I'm currently retired and writing Bread Madness, a book which I hope will help to change our institutionally driven culture into one that is more supportive and compassionate toward the elderly.
View all posts by Hillary Volk
Freelance Writer, Disability Blogger and Accessibility Consultant. I write and blog about #Accessibility #AudioDescription #Blindness #Disability and #Reading
A Frequent Blog of Devotionals Inspired by A Course in Miracles, A Course of Love, The Way of Mastery, Choose Only Love--Plus More . . . with Celia Hales - https://www.amazon.com/author/celiahales
