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.