Playing with Fire, or Using It

 

I have a relationship with AI. I’ve tried to fight it. But it’s really useful. I ask my phone a question, and a lovely female voice answers it. Now I know it’s not human and I could change the voice, but I guess the system understood me well enough to know I would prefer the female.

All of that said, I know the limits here. When I ask a question, it’s almost always about a fact, a date in history, is someone dead or alive, or how to do something very practical and specific. If I have a question about Microsoft Word, for example, in the old days of a few years ago, I would have had to watch a 20-minute YouTube and hope the producer would cover the topic. Or my query would have brought back 50 different links to scroll through. But the AI woman instantly gives me the solution. Now, she could be wrong, but if it sounds logical, I might at least try it. MY choice.

What I don’t do is ask her questions on higher-level topics, for example, what is the meaning of life? Her answer might be interesting, but I know she is not qualified to handle such a question.

I don’t ask AI to write things for me, or even speak for me in my own voice, which it could easily do now. I guess it just wouldn’t feel genuine, which is important to me.

Many of us are afraid of AI and think it could spell the end of our civilization. Maybe. The good news is, humans have learned to live with, and harness, destructive forces like fire. We use it for heat and cook with it, and for millennia, used it for light too. We don’t stick our hand in it, that hurts.

OK, but can we learn to manage the new monster that we have created? We have done OK with fire and electricity, and even TV, all of which were said to be major threats to our well-being. Will this new thing take our jobs, drain our energy, and render us useless before destroying our species?

All these new things change us, and not always for the better. But none of them master us, unless we allow it, and that’s where the problem is. Even when solutions are in front of us, as with climate change, we ignore them.

But we are humans, dammit, and we’re pretty smart, albeit a little slow. I’m still optimistic. Why, I don’t know. But I’m not gonna ask HER.

Collateral Damage

 

The recent resignations of Republican Congressman Tony Gonzales of Texas and Democrat Eric Swalwell of California have shocked us but likely not surprised us. It’s a continuation of the theme of powerful men alleged to have taken sexual advantage of the women who worked for them.  We may be wondering if this is a common pattern for male members of Congress. One of my Facebook friends posted that if all the sexual offenses committed by Congressmen were brought to light, the legislative buildings would be pretty empty.

One thing to understand is the shame and the damage – it goes way beyond an offender’s reputation. Those of us of a certain age may remember the case of Wilbur Mills, the Arkansas Democrat who was chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee and his connection with a stripper named Fanne Foxe. One night in October 1974, Mills, with Ms. Foxe in his car, was pulled over by police near the DC Tidal Basin for having his headlights off. He was said to be drunk. She, meanwhile, got out of the car and jumped into the water, apparently to avoid the cops. She was rescued. It was so close to Election Day that Mills was easily re-elected to Congress but lost his committee chairmanship.

I read that this saga had serious implications in Congress, as Ways and Means’ ability to appoint Congressional committee members was lost. Mills himself had been thought of as a careful shepherd of US tax legislation, and it’s said that our tax system became a lot messier without his leadership.

Swalwell was a rising star in the Democratic Party, but the distraction of the sexual case forced him not only to leave Congress but to drop his bid for California governor. Now I never especially liked him and got rather tired of seeing his face on cable TV panels all the time. But does it all mean he was a bad legislator? It could certainly be argued that his resignation caused the voters of his district to lose a powerful representative.

In our culture, there is special contempt for those alleged to have committed sexual offenses, especially now. After MeToo, a few of the rich, famous, and powerful offenders have seen their former reputations somewhat revived, but it is a very few.

We probably can’t expect sainthood from our elected officials. But while consensual sexual indiscretion is one thing, exercising power that harms someone else is quite another. In the end, a lot of people lose.

On a brighter note, though, Mr. Mills recovered from alcoholism, became a prominent recovery speaker, and helped found Arkansas’ Wilbur D. Mills (rehabilitation) Center for Alcoholism. He died in 1992 at age 82, while Fanne Foxe lived until she was 84.

The Unwitting Environmentalist

Maybe he didn’t intend it, but President Trump, at least in one respect, is doing the planet a great big favor. One giant side effect of the Iran war is the attention being brought to that country’s stranglehold on oil and other important commodities largely caused by geography: the Strait of Hormuz. It’s not fair, perhaps, that the Iran regime should have control over 20 percent of the world’s daily oil supply, but so far, it does.

The most immediate effect of the war is the increase in the price of oil and its knock-on effect on gasoline prices here in the US and many other countries, resulting in inflation and great economic hardship. But some may be smiling.

One of them might be your neighbor down the street who owns a Tesla, the same car on which, earlier this year, he had a bumper sticker apologizing for owning it because it came from Elon Musk, who at the time was using his famous chainsaw on government agencies. But now, your neighbor can’t control his smile, because he doesn’t have to buy gas for $6 a gallon. Meanwhile, we guzzlers have to cut down on our driving because we simply can’t afford it. Let’s see: less driving. That means, not only less traffic congestion, but less air pollution, right?

I have a friend (not a neighbor) who has solar panels on his house and a battery system to store energy. At night, he charges his Tesla up, then drives it around the next day. It has been quite a while since he has purchased one drop of gasoline. Does any of this sound attractive?

Let’s be clear: oil isn’t going away anytime soon. If it weren’t for all those dead dinosaurs, we might not have the civilization we enjoy now, so we can’t blame ourselves   too much for putting it to use. It’s still needed for many other things, like plastics.

But shouldn’t we continue thinking about alternatives? We don’t until we’re in pain. Some may remember the pain we suffered in the 1970s, when many of us waited in line to get a few gallons of the limited supply at our local gas station. Well, it happened then, and it may be starting to happen now in some other Western countries. But do you think maybe there’s a chance it might happen once more in the future?

Rare earths may be the next commodity we get into a fist fight over. But wouldn’t it get us ahead in life to find our own sources or at least maintain relationships with others who may have what we need? It would be nice if we could all just get along.