Artificial intelligence

Are we being slowly sucked in? Good or Bad?

In high school, I became interested in electronic gadgets. Got a ham radio license as a sophomore in high school. The hard part was leaning the morse code at 5 words per minute, then two years later jumping from novice to general class license with a 13 wpm code test and not until about 1982 or so, got the extra class at 25 words per minute….. but things had really changed. Back in high school, many of my buddies congregated around our garage. My dad and brother were gurus with engines, cars etc and I played with electronics.. My good buddy built up a funny box in the garage with transistors which were new back in that time. He had some small neon light bulbs that would light up as his “computer” ran and did calculations. Of course, buddy Robert was brilliant and he had to explain the 7 digit binary code to me with all lights off except the far right one, meaning 0000001 which meant “1”.. wow cool. Dial telephones, eventually became electronic with dual tone (DTMF) coding where mashing a button resulted in two audio frequencies to be transmitted.. each pair would trigger a relay and equal a number… and then came “computers” and by 1983 I had bought a computer with a 10 megabyte hard drive which spun and made noise! Eventually two Sunday school buddies programmed the computer(s) in my office to run my usual paperwork about insurance and billing and also to digitize and print signals on a sheet of vascular testing I did in the office. All these points are evidence of the subtle invasion of my life with “artificial intelligence”.. iPhones, cellphones, computer controlled equipment, surgical imaging that is incredible crisp and accurate.

Another hobby was flying. While “in” the Air Force I did sneak away and take civilian pilot license classes and flight instruction getting the ticket in 1975.. and have been flying since. That leads me to the integration of computers and the human brain in two areas of my experience… surgery and also flying. In flying I had to learn about VORS, ADFs, and eventually LORAN..a Navy system to give latitude and. longitude. Then along came the Global positioning satellite (GPS) system…. Before long everything was synchronized to the GPS system. Everything I had learned about the old radios became outdated. Those gauges I learned to fly on ran on a stream of air being pulled through the instrument by a vacuum pump. “Loss” of vacuum pump in the clouds was a serious affair and led to many aircraft accidents because the gauges “tumbled”… No gauges, it gets scary when you are in the clouds.. Imagine trying to figure up and down and right and left inside of a hollowed out ping pong ball… No references.

But the GPS and computer systems have improved amazingly well and learning how to handle all these new instruments made for a superb and safer flight experience. I have even now put in parts of the systems in my >40 yr old single engine Cessna..and basically had a system as complex and accurate as a modern airliner. Recently, returning from a hunt and flying cross country with another pilot friend of mine, I had everything working perfectly cross country until it suddenly went “tango uniform” (ask a military guy what that means).. And it happened about 40 miles from my home airport… A big notification on my screen “GPS SYSTEM IS DOWN- refer to visual and terrain reference immediately” Well, wait a minute.. a couple of button punches and I was back on that 50 year old VOR system… AND, Although at night it was clear, I was over familiar territory, and I could see the flashing green beacon at home base… so no problem. Flew in normally and landed without a hiccup.

Point being is that we are becoming more and more and more dependent on technology and computers. Allow me to say that we old grey haired pilots do discuss the young 20 yr old something pilots who have minimal experience on the steam gauges. They know the computer systems much better than me but when everything goes “tango uniform” how are they gonna do? Be aware that to fly an airliner, one needs about 1500 hrs pilot time and the airlines have superb training so don’t worry about your next vacation. They also have two pilots (as I did that night) Always good to have two pilots brings thinking this out to a safe landing.

Know that computers and AI are doing so well, that there are discussions being held that maybe we only need one pilot in that airliner…. or one conductor driving that 100 car long train down the tracks. Or in the medical field, just a nurse punching in data into a computer where a distant pharmacist looks at his computer and fills remotely your prescription and the “doctor” has little if any input into medical decision making, diagnosis and treatment. They are called “pathways” where consensus of “Expert” opinion have made it so “Standard” that you don’t need a simple doctor to get involved. You might imagine my thoughts on that kind of decision making.

Enlarge that kind of thinking to draw in federal, state, government agencies and before you know it psyops are used to sugar coat these “smart” rules and guidelines - “Don’t rely on that old grey haired doctor…. we are the…. Federal, State..agencies/associations and we know better.”

May I say “WRONG.” Many of these decision makers haven’t been in practice long enough to have a good back ground. Ask Dr. Fauci how long it has been since he has made rounds, examined a patient, looked through a microscope or palpated an acute abdomen, much less listened to a heart, looked at a MRI of the heart etc..

Want to read more about where this is going? I strongly recommend Dr Malone’s recent Substack. If it doesn’t click right away, highlight, copy and paste into your favorite browser. Really smart doctor/researcher….

https://open.substack.com/pub/rwmalonemd/p/physicals-virtuals-machines-and-overlords?r=yorky&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web