"Yeah, it's a hassle"
On technology as a cranky companion.
A few weeks ago, my wife Heather texted me in the middle of a weekday to let me know that one of our kids had spilled water on her pants at school and needed a change of clothes. Heather works pretty close to the school, but had walked to work that day. She walks to work when she can because it's not terribly far from our home, she finds it a good way to get a little extra movement, and she enjoys it.
But for her to come retrieve clothes, it would have been a whole thing. So she texted me to see if I could bring a change of pants to the school. I said I could. Then she said:
"Sorry. This is why I should just drive"
An expression of Mom Guilt. Humanity. Vulnerability.
As a partner, my job in that moment was to say, "Of course not. You had no idea this would happen, and it's easy enough to deal with." And really, even if neither of us had been able to bring a change of clothes, our daughter would have been fine.
However: I had recently updated my smart telephone's operating system to a version that added in some ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE capabilities. As anyone who has not been living underneath a literal rock knows, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE is very hot and awesome and will solve so many of society's problems but also maybe become sentient and kill us all but also make it easier to order pizza and/or get a doctor's appointment but also eliminate all of our jobs etc.
So my smart telephone, newly enabled and emboldened with ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE technology, suggested a response to my wonderful, very real, human wife in this moment:
"Yeah, it's a hassle"
It was formatted as a button below the text field. I could have easily tapped it to fill in my response and send it on its way. Saving me dozens of seconds of thought and composition. "Yeah, it's a hassle," I would have said, letting my wife know that her decision to get some fresh air and avoid burning gasoline was definitely an inconvenience.
Fuck you, telephone.
Actually, my telephone does not have a brain or feelings, so: fuck you, technologists who thought this would be a good idea, and failed to think about the myriad ways ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE would suggest really dumb and insensitive responses to everyday conversations.
Actually, I work with many technologists (myself included) who fight against dumb and insensitive technology, so: fuck you, executives who insisted that ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE be integrated into this telephone's software well before its value was clear and nonharmful.
Actually: Fuck you, society that has valued technological advancements over thoughtful human interaction for many, many years.
Fuck you, politicians who have failed to require meaningful protections and guidelines and failsafes for this technology seeping into our lives before it's ready for prime time.
I'm not so foolish as to think that ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE is a complete wash or it has no place in our society, but it certainly needs more refinement and care than most companies rushing to deploy it are giving. I recently read Analog by Robert Hassan, expecting it to be a fun exploration of why people still enjoy record players, pencils, film cameras and so on.
Reader, it was anything but fun. The overarching theme was as follows, at least according to my interpretation: we (humans) keep expecting technological advancements to free up time from labor to allow us to enjoy lives of leisure. But (SPOILER ALERT) we (the ruling/wealthy class?) keep finding more uses for our time to contribute to the economy.
So while the printing press was supposed to liberate human hands from copying texts, it just handed them new jobs in factories. While the invention of computational math was supposed to free up human brains so they could absorb books and conversations, it merely enabled them to think about programming better and faster software and hardware.
We've seen advancements like ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE before. They keep getting bigger and more powerful for sure, but they're anything but new. I'm not qualified or even interested in predicting the future, but I have a sneaking suspicion that while ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE will transform a number of things about our lives, we'll still need to keep doing a bunch of messy human things like eating, sleeping, writing, making records, taking out the trash, arguing, watching TV, rebooting the router, etc.
It's a hassle.
———
Visit grantshellen.com for more from and/or about me.