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Some thoughts from someone on just one of the small playing fields about how AI is supposed to massively disrupt.
AI isn’t putting me out of my job today. I’m feeling pretty good about tomorrow too.
I think AI is our current modern miracle. It is that next, better tool that will propel us to better things for humanity in general. Like electricity, it’s not something we can hold in our hand. But it will power so many things that we can’t even conceive of right now.
It’s not an evil overlord. Nor a benevolent caretaker. Just a tool. Just the result of a lot of calculations. Just predicting what comes next in a pattern given mountains of input. The hand ax was a great tool thousands of years ago to feed and shelter our ancestors. On the other hand, there are some that suffered on the receiving end of that hand ax.
Take a look at this image generated by AI. I asked for a simple line drawing about finding the difference between two dates for an upcoming blog. It’s a very abstract idea for an image.
Now look at it again and pay attention to the Calendars and clocks:
- The calendar month has 72 days
- Days and hours on the calendars and clocks are not sequential.
- Days and hours repeat
- Which day of the week start with D, C or K?
- Other small, fun items such as six fingers on his right hand
Calendars and clocks have been around for centuries. How they work is not abstract.
Just the fact that this image was generated from nothing but a few words on a command line is amazing. This is cool. This is neat. We must figure out how to use this better.
How can I use this better?
My thoughts? Treat AI like that super smart college intern that has no idea about what they are writing about. It will look great and read even better. It may not be anything close to correct given whatever that intern found on the internet to generate the document.
That’s where we come in. Us pesky humans with decades of experience and a big, analog processor between our ears. We get to shake our heads in bemused disbelief. We can say “Nice Start… but let’s work on that a little… maybe a lot”.
We’re the adults in the room.
So, AI is the next powerfully enabling tool just like that hand ax. I think if we learn to use it, we can extract many, yet to be imagined benefits for us, our families, and communities.
If I fear it, hate it, and shun it… then someone is going to use it on me.
