If there was any doubt, AI mania was on full display at Google Cloud Next in Las Vegas this week, but history shows us that when humans start getting manic about things, it doesn’t always work out great.
Lately, I’ve seen a few commentators bringing up the horrible story of the radium girls to try to make this point. Have you ever heard of them? They were factory workers of the 1920s hired to paint watch faces with newfangled luminous paint containing deadly radium.
The camel hair paintbrushes the workers used lost their shape after a few brush strokes so they were encouraged to reshape the brushes by licking the tips. Many of the workers also used the paint as lipstick or nail polish, because why not?
This did not go well for anybody involved. Many radium girls experienced dental issues, lost teeth, and suffered oral lesions and ulcers. Others developed anaemia and necrosis of the jaw. Some experienced disruption to their menstrual cycles or were even rendered sterile.
At least 50 women died prematurely as a result.
This wasn’t the only misuse of radium. In a short-lived mania for the radioactive metal – first discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898 – humans also put it in toothpaste, hair cream, and a medicinal tonic drink called Radithor. Doctors even used it to try to treat cancer.
AI is manifestly not a radioactive element but there are clear parallels between its widespread application and the reckless use of radium a century ago. And I believe there is a warning here for us, or a lesson if we care to hear it; we need to figure AI out before we do something really dumb.
