Tale of the coder, of his wife and of the dangerous AI

In the time that were to come, a venerable coder was telling of the beauty of his craft to his young wife.



« Dear wife, we coders, like wizards, build wonderful constructions out of logic that like oracles can predict the future in a nice pure way...
We give to our creature a long list of random events of the past, and such as a wonderful new born child without no prior knowledge our creature learns by itself what is a cause and what might be consequence in the future, guessing correctly the web of signal of causes and consequences by logic. Our creation are better than humankind which judgement is often clouded by ridiculous affections at predicting outcomes!

Husband, can the oracle fails?

Well it can, but this is so seldom you can discard it as something never happening, and anyway we use our creations on harmless jobs such as choosing the best ad for you. For now, it works very well. So well, it is creepy. Why?

Would you bet your life, my dearling, that most of the power of your algorithm is not from its accuracy but like for a religion in its power of self prophecy? Is it you trusting so much your automata you weight heavily for choosing its early conclusions as valid, and that maybe he has learned through the cloud of your excessive confidence that it should trust itself? Have you correctly taught your creation to doubt itself my dear?

You seem very meta-physical my dear today .... You may be blond and young, but my tingling senses tells me this question could have serious implications.

Dear husband, cannot you notice that your bright creation is proposing on your screen a targeted advertisement for a dating site for young ladies. Are you finding your 20 years old wife too old? »



The story tells that a reasonable amount of doubt in your infallibility  can save an happy marriage, and that coders thinks better of what false positive means when confronted in their life with a worst case failure that is supposed to not happen that often. 

The story also tells that we should not believe in our creations, but carefully measure they achieve their goals.

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