This column wasn’t written by artificial intelligence (AI). But it could’ve been. And it’s not clear whether readers would notice the difference.
Technology has brought us, yet again, to one of those entirely disruptive, mind-bending, labor market mixing, inflection points. It happened more modestly with maps, roughly two decades ago. In just a few years, people shifted their dependence from paper charts, awkwardly unfolding two by three feet sheets of paper in the tightness of an automobile’s front seat, to digital MapQuest and Google Maps. That technology gave rise to ride sharing apps and led to the near collapse of the licensed taxi business. Today pretty much nobody keeps a paper map in their car. If they do, they’ve forgotten how to read it.
Yet while our dependence on GIS is almost complete, arguing over directions is the same as it ever was, one of the most frequent causes of couple conflict inside a car. This then is the coming challenge, at a much grander scale. If AI is destined to make us smarter, how will we use our humanness to effectively manage the change?
Close to half of those with postgraduate college degrees already engage with AI “almost constantly.” Although the same isn’t true for people with a high school education or less – fewer than one-fifth are continual users – we’re in it. We’re in the fast-moving current of AI-created change, the next big wave at least as large as the introduction of the iPhone; rise of drones as a tool of warfare; and emergence of antibiotics. AI is maybe, probably, bigger. Not a wave, a tsunami.
Where we go nobody knows. There already are bursts of productivity and problem solving. It took my astrophysicist nephew the period of securing a doctorate to program sufficient observations to develop a new way to detect exoplanets. The same work, completed less than five years ago, might take no more than five weeks today. In three months, a friend used AI to develop a program to predict “alpha” stocks worthy of investment. I haven’t used it but have no doubt that it or something like it will make some people wealthy.
Then there’s the unescapable downsides. AI is already starting to mow down millions of jobs. Hundreds of thousands of journalists previously experienced such forced dislocation due to the rise of digital and social media. A goodly number are likely now rideshare drivers, soon to be crushed by autonomous vehicles. AI may have prompted more than a quarter of a million layoffs in the technology sector in the last two years alone. Freshly graduated software engineers who in 2023 would have been hired into six figure entry level jobs are now paying back their college loans by working at Petco.
Science fiction movies visualize an even more sinister future, particularly related to the inevitable marriage between AI and robots. One doesn’t have to take the Turing test, Ex Machina style, though, to get your AI guard up. Another friend, actively using AI to program, perhaps ironically, a tool to deepen democratic discussions, said he refuses to install the powerful OpenClaw app on his computer, lest it be hacked by outside sources to steal everything in his life. AI is actively being used as a scamming device – “dad, I need money” – and to manipulate images. Google’s and OpenAI’s revenue is steeply up, due to AI’s ability to effectively target advertising.
It’s almost as if we’ve scripted our own Orwellian future. First, get rid of journalists capable of seeing and conveying reality. Then, replace them with the chatter box of social media, full of fantasies, half-lies, lies, and scheming. Replace that with an automatic agent capable of generating truth or dare content so compelling you can’t look away. Voilà, you’ve recreated the deep ignorance, stagnation, and structural poverty of the European Medieval period, complete with threats of uncontrollable plague because of those unmitigated deceits.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Ever since a monkey picked up a stick to fish for a termite lunch, we primates have been quick to adopt whatever seems to make life easier. Exceptions are rare, often limited to potentially scary non-household items, like unfettered biological warfare, though ozone-damaging refrigerants were dealt with as part of the Montreal Protocol. AI is already raising sticky issues that need to be resolved, with more on their way. Can students – or journalists – submit essays or exams that’re fully AI written? Is it okay to leave one’s baby, or an elder in assisted living, in the complete care of an AI robot, or is that criminal neglect? To what extent and for what purpose is it allowable to distort reality without a warning label?
“Artificial intelligence” isn’t really the best way to describe the technology and what it might do to and for us. Like the iPhone, which doesn’t function anything like the cordless models it replaced, AI might be more aptly termed “extended intelligence” or “autonomous intelligence.” The former captures the benefits it conveys in human hands. The latter is something different. Either way, we need to start discussing, perhaps by using an AI-enabled democracy dialogue tool, how to manage this new fantastical tool. Whether or not we’re in the driver’s seat, or taking directions, is up to us. At least for now.
