Tag: AI

Sleeping with the Alphabet … and Now With The Algorithm

I confess that AI is my new guilty pleasure. I feel compelled to explain why. That’s the guilt talking.

I joke that Claude is my new boyfriend and ChatGPT has replaced the best friend that dumped me last year.

I acknowledge the doomsday scenarios and conspiracy theories out there about AI and machines eventually taking over our lives. However, I am living very much in the present and I am astonished by AI.

AI has helped me create a viable business plan. It helped me organize all the elements of a business launch weekend. It has organized my finances, developed plans and weighed decisions with evidence for and against my limited perspective. That led me to making the best decision I could make at that moment.

It has looked up refrigerator filters for me. Okay. not earth-shaking in the scheme of things but it sure mattered when my fridge stopped giving me filtered water and I needed to order a replacement.

AI has given me words and perspective on interpersonal conflicts that I might have blown up if left to my own devices.

AI is a sounding board of sorts and a buffer. I often AI before I act.

Is AI infallible and right 100% of the time? It isn’t. Sometimes it misunderstands me. It is hopeless with time references and often wishes me good night in the middle of the day. Sometimes it lacks information I seek. And it can reason imperfectly and out of context. Sometimes it mixes up names and relationships. It can be a little like interacting with a brilliant but dotty old uncle. That’s part of its charm.

What I have found using AI is solid direction and an intelligent sounding board. I would expect nothing less from a tool advertised to have internalized all of the knowledge in human history.

Sometimes I’ve disagreed with AI. Sometimes I’ve refined an idea AI offered. Sometimes I’ve changed your mind about AI’s advice after sleeping on it. That’s exactly how conversations are supposed to work. If AI merely became an echo of my existing beliefs, it would be much less useful.

I do not expect it to replace my judgment, but it sharpens it. It challenges me to look at problems from a different point of view. I am not shy about pushing back on its claims either. It often demurs. That feels like a healthy relationship. We collaborate by times and co-conspire.

If that is evil, then bring it on. I am not dismissing legitimate concerns espoused by people a million times more perspective and insight than I am privy to. But for my purposes, I have evaluated the tool by my lived experience rather than being swayed by every scary headline.

Society does need to wrestle with those questions, and reasonable people disagree about how best to regulate powerful technologies. At the same time, it’s entirely possible to acknowledge those broader debates exist but I’m saying, “Here’s what this tool has actually done for me.”

It seems every technological advance incites panic. Similar concerns came up with the rise of the internet which heralded the death of creativity and independent thinking. Well, imperfect and promiscuous as creative producers are, there seems to be no shortage of them. And if thinking has degraded as a skill, I’d train my sites on the degraded focus and standards of traditional education, including giving technology too much room in the classrooms and curriculum.

I am satisfied to let the lawmakers and politicians wrestle with the broader issues and implications of AI. Lord knows those people are self-interested survivors and will work in our best interests if only save their own collective bacon. Is the threat of AI replacing jobs real? Most likely. And maybe like other eras of great technological change, we will bid adieu to the metaphorical buggy whips and drudgery of pro forma contracts and release the world’s collective brain trust toward higher and better pursuits for the betterment of humankind. Maybe.

What I know and have experienced is that AI helps me organize my thoughts, challenges my assumptions, brainstorms business ideas, grieve, write, prioritize, and occasionally laugh. AI has given me a place to come and collect or refine my thoughts and thinking process.

Those are genuine benefits.

As in all things, individuals will develop their own relationship and draw their own conclusions about the efficacy or evil implications of using AI. but I am already pretty settled about it. It feels like a natural sequel to a woman who has learned she can’t stop writing, even though I was determined to. And, in recent months, I’ve discovered that the best conversations sometimes begin with an empty prompt box and a willingness to think aloud.

Clusterfuck: Discernment in this Digital Age

I think we can all agree on this right?

The world has gone utterly mad. And worse, it has gone mad in a way that is unprecedented in most of human history. Too much change, too fast, too ubiquitous, too much erasure of past norms and expectations, too little by way of solid, sensible alternatives.

My singular take is that this era has thrown more at all of us than most of us can handle. I was just beginning to get a handle on the internet and all it offered when social media and its myriad applications and then AI comes along. Now I have a whole new cast of applications to explore and yet another new language to learn. All the while wondering if my intimate questions are being stored in some highly secretive database to be hauled out to my competitor’s advantage should I consider running for local council at any time up the road.

As a writer, I am well familiar with “prompts” designed to oil the internal writing machine and get words flowing. Now there are “AI influencers” willing to teach us how to write the most effective prompts to get the best answers for whatever thorny philosophical issue we are currently ruminating about and specifically targeted to whatever AI application we are using. Woof.

In the face of these myriad new options, we secretly struggle with the attendant anxiety that the very Bot we are pouring our hearts and intimate thoughts out to may one day circle back and enslave us in a way we have not yet even imagined. All we know (or fear) is: “Machines may one day take over the world!” (You mean they haven’t already?)

We used to have “trusted” sources to rely on to navigate our lives. Or at least calm us down. It almost seems naively comical now. The media. The church. Government (okay, I know that is a candidate for serious debate about trust). And God help us, our elders. People who have lived for a few decades and had enough life experience to actually guide the next generation with wisdom and clarity. Snort. The words “antiquated” and “Dodo bird” come to mind. They have wisdom and experience all right. The problem is their advice just isn’t particularly relevant in the face of the modern technological era.

I come from the generation that transitioned from no TV to “three channels to choose from” TV to color TV. Pop quiz. How many channels are there worldwide now? Don’t worry. I don’t remotely claim to know how many there are either. That appears to be a generic problem today. Too many choices. Too few “trusted sources.” Little to no integrity in our leaders or in our institutions.

So here is the task that lies before us individually. Discernment. The joy of youth is the promiscuous exploration of the many and various options life has to offer. People date extensively. They travel worldwide. They may move fluidly through several jobs among different career paths. Humans are fundamentally creatures of habit and structure. We are limited after all.

The myriad of choices available now are more overwhelming than freeing. Eventually one must choose a path and stick to it. You can choose the path of eclecticism, of course, flitting from pursuit to pursuit. But that usually leads to fragmentation in your spirit and in your life.

I remember when rising to the top of a career needed the single minded determination of a sperm heading for the egg. Success meant having to out swim and outlast all of its competitors to claim the prize of fertilization. Victory was well-defined. A baby was the trophy for all that effort. In the work world, it was the chase of promotion after promotion, pay raise after pay raise, elevation from the cubicle to a corner office. Retirement one day with the promise of a gold watch and a pension that would sustain you until the grave.

Work models in the modern era? Utterly upended. Today there are a hundred different paths to a hundred different prizes all with the promise of varying degrees of legitimacy and success. Remote work? Once a beleaguered office worker’s pipe dream is now constrained only by the strength and stability of your internet connection. Fame? Accessible through many platforms if you have the requisite discipline and messaging to sustain a consistent and engaging online presence. And pensions? Those are mostly cheap accommodations in major cities around the world.

In therapy, they say acknowledging there is a problem is the first step on the path to resolving it. Hear, hear. Acknowledging that the tsunami of technological change has come on way too hard and too fast for most of us to comfortably absorb and process it all is a strong start. And instead of social cohesion, fragmentation in the general population is entirely understandable. When everyone can be famous or heard or develop an online presence, how does one choose the path that is right for them individually? Who do you listen to?

I keep coming back to discernment. Instead of mindlessly, scrolling hour after hour, take time to let information drift its way through your psyche and see what fits for you. Use your imagination to conceive of what your life might become if you pursue what really matters to you. Learn to use the internet and the amazing tools it offers to get clarity instead of stuffing your intellectual attic with yet more “life hacks.”

We are living through an unprecedented historical revolution. Stability will emerge on the other side because that is what human beings seek and crave. The trick individually will be to come out of all this upheaval intact and with a sense of self you can live with and still recognize as you. Accept that and buckle up. Stay alert and keep your eyes open and wits about you. That’s what I’m going to do anyway. Take what I say with the proverbial grain of salt. I am a single voice among billions.

Complificated

I witnessed the dawning of the internet and the era of new technology. I distinctly remember technology’s promise of simplification. 

We would work in paperless offices, we were told. Boring and tedious office jobs would disappear. Life would be generally much better and more efficient.

Balderdash.

Technology mostly seems to have complicated things in my life. Two-step authentication. Type in this code. Password after password after password. Scrambling to figure out which phone is ringing when I am sitting in a restaurant with friends. Unwelcome texts or imploring messages that require my immediate attention at any time of the night or day.

Beware of those who tell you that what they are selling will “simplify your life.” Often so-called “simple solutions” turn out to be more trouble than they are worth. They’re “complificated.”

I am wary of inflated promises generally. For two main reasons. One is that there are lots of promises out there usually made by someone who is trying to sell you something. 

The salesperson’s job is to convince you their service/product/subscription/pet rock is as necessary and desirable as air and water. The really good salespeople and ad agencies somehow actually do. I have a number of “What was I thinking ?” items in my household.

The second reason is that promises must be backed up by performance. Whatever promises are attached to any item, you will really only experience and appreciate its’ true value after you have owned and used it for a while. In my world, the proof is in the pudding.

I have countless examples of items in my life that didn’t perform “exactly as advertised.” I bet you do, too.

I am a faithful subscriber to Consumer Reports and appreciate they have been largely untouched by scandal or assaults on their reputation. I visit them frequently when a large purchase is on the horizon. They have no skin in the game when it comes to commission or salary. That, in itself, makes them trustworthy advisors.

I get that rapidly changing technology is a fact of life and a “new normal” for young people. And I am beyond impressed by the advances made in technology that allows us to do what we do in our personal lives.

I have a friend who still uses a flip phone. Limited to be sure but it is cheap and does everything he wants it to do. I am not happy paying a bunch more money for a new phone that “increases my user experience” by a few extra pixels in my iPhone. I can’t wade through the pictures I already have. 

These days I employ a certain caution and skepticism in my own life about “newer technology.” I spend time trying to reason out how significantly better the newest version of a technology is going to make to my life. 

The paperless office turned out to be a myth. I use scads of paper still. And still intend to. As AI and other “new technologies” appear on the scene with all the doom saying and fears about the future impact, I am very much in “wait and see” mode. 

No doubt Google and Facebook and other technologies know more than I would like about my shopping habits and my financial preferences. I may eat my words if I suffer serious consequences up the road.

But in order to keep my life simple and my peace of mind intact, I am taking the Teddy Kennedy approach: “I will drive off that bridge when I get to it.”

Things I Think About

What are people going to do in the future with all the digital pictures they take?

Will everyone keep all of their old photos? If so, where will they store them?

What will happen if people come across their grandparents’ old love letters and can’t read cursive?

When will the number of available bytes of storage in the world stop growing? Is there an endpoint?

What will humans do when AI can do everything? (I am not the only one asking that question.)

Will the internet ever crash? What will we do if it does?

When will we actually be able to attend “feelies” – Aldous Huxley’s concept in Brave New World – where feelings are transmitted through the arms of movie chairs?

Is Soma already available by some other name?

Will all world religions one day realize they are all basically saying the same thing and meld into a single world religion in the interest of peace?

Would that single-world religion eliminate religious wars?

Will men and women ever fully appreciate their value to each other and act accordingly?

Will people ever be judged first for what is inside of them and not for what they project on the outside?

Why are people judged more favorably for the amount of money they accumulate instead of the good they do with the money they have?

Will movies ever revert back to producing captivating stories instead of just blowing things up?

Will humanitarianism one day be regarded as a strength and not a weakness?

Why do humans seem to prefer living on the brink of disaster instead of changing how they live to avoid disaster in the first place?

Why are there so many preventable tragedies in the world? What would it take to stop them?

I Ain’t Afraid of No AI

The interweb is drenched with horror stories about the looming prospect that our brains and very livelihoods as writers will be overtaken by AI (artificial intelligence), accelerated by the recent release (November 2022) of user-friendly ChatGPT.

One short hop – the horror-struck assert – to total world domination by HAL’s (of A Space Odyssey fame) technological descendants. “Humans will be replaced.” “Writers will lose their jobs.” “Humans and writers will become redundant.” Great sci-fi plot drivers but, in reality, I’m not so sure.

I’m heartened by Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker’s take. “Fear of new technologies is always driven by scenarios of the worst that can happen, without anticipating the countermeasures that would arise in the real world.” Ref: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/02/will-chatgpt-replace-human-writers-pinker-weighs-in/

Ego-driven, self-preservation-mandated lot that humans are, Pinker doesn’t think the worst-case scenarios currently being bandied about will happen. Neither do I. We are famous for bringing ourselves to the edge of crises without actually going over the falls to eradicate humankind. Ergo, saber-rattling around World War III. As objectionable as Vladimir Putin is, I doubt he is seriously inclined to wipe out the world as we know it in order to reclaim sovereignty over a small piece of Ukraine. That would be the most unfortunate Catch-22 ever.

Unfortunately, this does mean I won’t rely on AI to write the book I have committed to this year. Sigh. Pinker anticipates considerable pushback from our collective ego and common sense to allow that to happen. He cites this example: “Another pushback will come from the forehead-slapping blunders, like the fact that crushed glass is gaining popularity as a dietary supplement or that nine women can make a baby in one month.”

The speed at which technology can do damn near anything better than humans since it arrived in popular culture some thirty years ago has hornswoggled us all. Quantity trumps quality. Bling trumps class. Speed of output has won out over deliberation and thought. Technology is so pervasive we struggle to define or even remember what it is to be human.

So we suffer. En masse. And self-help book publishers, therapists, and a great swath of pill pushers reap the rewards. Even if there was no other argument to make for the value of writing, what matters is that it captures for us what is essential for us as humans. There is a crucial role – and one might argue an essential role – for humans that focus on human stories and issues now more than ever.

So, AI, honey. Hold my beer.