THE DAILY McLUHAN DIALOGUES™
McDialogue™ is an Exploration of Media Ecology as an Anchor in a Sea of Change™
by Nelson S. Thall,
Former Director/Chief Archivist, Marshall McLuhan Center On Global Communications, Ross, Ca.
A Student of Technology asks:
Why is ‘artificial intelligence’ false advertising and false marketing, and what should it properly be called? You have renamed AI to PCM. What is that all about and why?
Nelson S. Thall replies:
What is called ‘artificial intelligence’ is neither artificial nor intelligent. It is a pseudo conscious machine, a PCM. By definition, it is an electronic abacus. Its hidden ground is the abacus itself: a passive bead frame that holds numbers while a human does the thinking. Electrify the abacus and you get the computer, an IBM 360, a Deep Blue, which pushes electronic beads at enormous speed according to rules a human wrote. Add high speed connectivity and big data, and the bead pusher becomes a pattern recognition engine of staggering scale.
Electronify the abacus and you get the smartphone and the AI glasses. But scale is not thought. Speed is not understanding. The machine detects patterns. It does not know. Call it what it is: a super horsepowered typewriter. An electrified abacus wears the mask of the mind. The phrase ‘artificial intelligence’ is false advertising, a figure floating free of its ground. The honest name is PCM: pseudo conscious machine. This explains why the Chinese have mastered AI ahead of the West. The abacus is their native instrument. The suanpan has been in Chinese hands for a thousand years. They recognize the electronic abacus for what it is, because they never lost contact with the original. The West, dazzled by its own marketing, mistakes the bead pusher for a brain.
China, working from the ground up, simply scaled the tool it already understood.
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All intellectual property contained herein was conceived, originated and authored exclusively by Nelson S. Thall. Artificial intelligence aka a pseudo-conscious machine (PCM) was not employed. We hired a stenographer. No intellectual contribution or creative authorship is attributed to the AI tool. All rights of authorship and ownership vest entirely and exclusively with Nelson S. Thall.
I can be reached at nelson@themediumisthemessage.com