Human intelligence

The weekend’s dramatic escalation of the long (I mean, loooooong) battle between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas defies quick analysis or glib commentary. But one element has garnered a lot of attention, and justifiably so: the catastrophic intelligence failure that meant Israel was utterly unprepared for Saturday’s extensive, well-coordinated Hamas attacks.

“It's a huge failure of the intelligence system and the military apparatus in the south," retired military general Yaakov Amidror, who served as Israel's national security advisor in 2011-2013, told Agence France-Presse. Officials were stunned at Hamas’ success, the New York Times reported, because “over the years, Israel has set up a network of electronic intercepts, sensors and human informants throughout Gaza, which is about half the area of New York’s five boroughs.”

No doubt there are wider strategic issues at play around the perceived threat of Hamas and other regional dynamics. But it’s hard not to think at least some blame lies with over-reliance on technology as a means of gathering intelligence. After all, the digital proficiency of Israel’s intelligence service is legendary—lock your iPhone, quick!—both in real life, and in the kinetic thrillers of Daniel Silva.

And when I think about the potential over-reliance on technology, my mind immediately turns to the issue more broadly, from the long-held promise of self-driving cars and especially to the emergence of generative AI. The early glimpses of AI through tools like ChatGPT are indeed pretty astonishing, not so much for the gathering of information—at its heart, ChatGPT is basically just a very comprehensive researcher—but is ability to piece data together in a coherent way. Asking your computer a question and having it answered in real-time really is a bit of a trip.

But … but … what does it all mean? Consultants the world over are pretending to know the answer—when companies are unsure about the impact of something, they’re willing to pay a lot of money to people who claim to know. Yet we seem to have already jumped to the conclusion GenAI is inevitable, and it’s now become a question of how we manage its impact.

Why? As with all technology, the pace and degree of adoption is entirely within our control. Don’t want GenAI displacing millions of workers? Don’t adopt it. “Oh, but our competitors will, so if we don’t we’ll be at a disadvantage and yada yada …”

I’m not so sure. Technology is a tool, and tools are only as effective and useful as how people use them. GenAI is definitely a work in progress, but in my world its critical contribution to date appears to be its ability to generate utterly mediocre content. To be sure: a lot of companies are just fine with their content being mediocre. But it’s not threatening anyone with the ability to craft an original turn of phrase, at least not yet.

Maybe that will change. Maybe it should change. But it’s within our control as to whether it does. I also have a sneaking suspicion the younger generations that are always at the forefront of adopting whatever’s latest and greatest may end up saving us (no pressure, though!).

Nothing makes you feel older than seeing people a generation or two younger rushing for the technology you used as a teenager, greeting it as though they’ve unearthed some mummified Egyptian artifact. Vinyl records! Cassettes! Video tapes! Books! But it’s lovely to see, both because others are getting to experience the joy of discovery and because of what it says about the broader, relentless push to shove the past aside in favor of a future no one seems really certain they want.

There’s something to be said for writing on paper. Listening to a record, all the way through. Reading a book. Where’s the satisfaction in writing that simply comprises telling ChatGPT what you want? And if GenAI is intended to free people to do higher-level creative work, how is that possible if no one has learned how to do the lower-level work that builds those skills?

I guess my general take is that people matter. Still, and always. And, as the world is painfully learning now, so does human intelligence.