73 Percent Human — Prologue: The Start of a Conversation

73 Percent Human — Prologue: The Start of a Conversation

This is the beginning of a conversation regarding one of the most pressing subjects humans have faced in their existence. What will AI do for us, and to us? Many opinions and even declarations already exist. The object of this interchange is not to stand out as smarter or superior. Rather, it is part of the discourse. And it is discourse, to a certain degree, that enables progress.

Why humans reach for destruction instead of discourse is one of the dastardly downfalls in our history. Perhaps that is for another time though. Writing is a portal with which to begin discourse. A dialogue between groups and peoples. Does this dialogue sometimes devolve into arguments and diatribes? Admittedly, yes. But it is part of who and what we are as a species. 

Writing is one of the ancient skills. It, like all skills, has evolved and changed shape over the centuries. Writing good is one thing. Writing well is entirely another. The first is a rather simple procedure. Using a keyboard, you strike three letters, two of them twice, in the correct order, and there you have it. “Good”. Writing well was expressed most eloquently, if not graphically, in a line usually credited to Hemingway. It almost certainly belongs to a sportswriter named Red Smith: “You simply sit down at the typewriter, open your veins, and bleed.”

I think what he meant was that a good writer does not filter or fetter his thoughts. Writing is part brain and part heart. It must be so. Too intellectual and no one can stomach the taste. Too much emotion and there is no form. Can all write? Sure. And many times what is considered writing well is in the eye of the reader who consumes the material.

This has begun to change. With the advent of large language models, almost anyone can write. Debates are surging with regard to their use. Opinions are being broadcast about ethics and even the morality of prompting artificial intelligence with an idea and having the prose presented to you in an instant. 

AI detectors have sprung up ubiquitously. Students are known to run their work through 'humanizer' tools before turning it in to their teachers. Teachers then use detectors to scan the homework and judge the originality and authorship of these pieces. I ran one of my own articles through a detector this week. It scored me 73 percent human. I am still deciding how I feel about the other 27.

It’s so easy to query AI and have it explain to you ‘X’. Tell me ‘Y’, you say. Anyone with connectivity can now have unlimited information in the blink of an eye. The seduction of that new capability is irresistible. Knowledge for all and right now.

This is what fuels the existential debate stirring in certain circles. Where are we headed?

I believe that this is unknowable. Yes, there will be those that with confidence tell you exactly where we are going. Perhaps they will be correct in their assertions. The destination is unknowable. The direction is not.

Humans are headed towards Artificial Superintelligence, or ASI. When will this be achieved? Also, unknowable. There is one company that says by as soon as the end of this year or early next, AI will be as smart as experts in nearly all fields of study. Other firms suggest that true ASI is a few years off. Some researchers argue we will never get there.

There are fears riding alongside these hopes. Way before the technology came to be within our reach, movies were made and books penned. They are all too familiar. Some could be summed up with, “We’re all gonna die!”, as their basic plot. Others take the route of something more fantastical. Humans are innately optimistic and adaptable. There really is nothing that we are not capable of, given the time and resources.

And that is exactly what brings tremors to the hearts of many. What are we really capable of, and do we want to go there? That may be inevitable. Such inertia already exists that the finality of this movement is a fait accompli. 

Now don’t take that as fatalistic. Sometimes inevitable is good. Which will this be?

I’m actually more interested in how humans will react to the apparent instant availability of analysis in all fields of study. Mine is human behavior. Will ASI make this obsolete? Quite the opposite, I think. Crowds are typically wrong at the turns. That is not my discovery. Humphrey Neill put it best in The Art of Contrary Thinking in 1954: “the public is right during the trends but wrong at both ends.”

The turn I remember best is March 2009. The S&P 500 had touched 666 that Friday, March 6, a number nobody could miss. The crowds were lost, beaten and battered by the relentless selling pressure. Then, on the morning of March 10, Mark Haines stepped out on a limb on live television: “I think we're at a bottom. I really do.” When I heard him say it, I’ll admit that there was a bit of disbelief. He was right, almost to the day. The closing low had come the afternoon before. What strikes me now is that the crowd was not short on information that week. It had more than it could stand. What it could not do was feel its way out of the fear.

There is one thing that seems to be difficult for computers to predict and that is human behavior. Since they don’t experience emotion and they don’t possess an amygdala, fear and greed are only a concept to describe. Their palms don’t sweat. Their hearts don’t beat. Emotion is unique to the human existence (dog owners may disagree).

Superintelligence is framed as the future ability to solve so many problems that we face. Soon it may be that prior experts are indeed obsolete. A capable user could supervise an ASI for an afternoon and produce results that before took months to years. That scares some. And we have seen similar in our history, just maybe not at this scale or depth. Technology is the disruptor. It always has been. But this tech, ASI, does seem to be the greatest of them all. Rightly so, fear is present. Doubt creeps into the room. Pessimism here is not a bad thing.

But all of this won’t stop us from where we are headed. We’re going there. What will you do about it? From where I observe, human behavior will be at the forefront of any iteration of our future. It always has and always will be.

We have been gifted a methodology that can track and project probabilities of that behavior, at the crowd level — yes, of course Elliott Wave Theory. Individuals are another matter. But the crowd — that is here as it has been. 

I’m a simple analyst and writer — a work ever in progress. Ebbs and flows of music well up inside and much of this reaches the page to be shared with others. This is the beginning of a conversation. It is not meant to be the end or the finality of an idea, only a beginning.

In future pieces there will be a helicopter pilot, learning to run again, a baseball scout, the speed of emotion, time travel to the year 1865 to study coal, and much, much more. All of this to contribute to the conversation of the greatest game on earth — the crowd in motion in front of our very eyes and how to read it.