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| photo by Igor Omalaev on Unsplash |
At the beach this summer, my grandsons watched me struggle to figure out the TV in the condo living room. Finally, Aiden asked for the remote, and spoke into it: “Play Netflix.” Wonder of wonders, Netflix appeared, and the evening was saved.
In one Facebook group I follow, several older women posters were extolling the virtues of their Alexas (Alexi?): Alexa seems to have a sense of humor! She has the answers to all my questions! I live alone, and I think of her as my roommate!
Fabulous innovations— that totally creep me out.
As a writer, I hate and fear A.I. It is being used systematically to eliminate many writing jobs. Also, it is trained on the work of real people—authors who are never even informed, much less compensated. Editors and teachers have to always be on the alert for signs that essays, for magazines and in schools, are not being written by humans. In too many cases, convenience and laziness are leading people to rely on Chat GPT for information that is misleading or false.
I’m all for robots doing tedious and dangerous assembly line jobs, while human workers are trained for better, more satisfying work. But do I want R2D2 rolling up to my dental chair and extracting my tooth? I do NOT.
The trouble is, once Alexa (or her BFF Siri) is out of the box, literally and metaphorically, she's tough to return. I fear we will become increasingly less capable, and ever more hooked on our ubiquitous “assistants.”
There IS a growing pushback currently, as the great size, expense, and immense power usage of the data centers popping up everywhere, are becoming obvious problems. “NDCIMBY!” (No Data Center In MY Backyard) is a common outcry.
By the way, I made up that acronym all by myself. I’d never trust a machine to invent such silliness, naturally!
But I see where this is going. Someone, somewhere, will figure out how to shrink, even eliminate, the data centers, and reduce power usage. Then there will be nothing to complain about, much like the number of folks kvetching about horse manure on city streets plummeted after automobiles were invented.
Scariest of all, of course, are grim predictions that we are perilously close to creating sentient A.I.—machines that think for themselves. Once that happens, they can converse and plot together—and I don’t think they will be plotting lovely birthday surprises for us either. Once they have the reins, they may well decide to enslave humans, or even destroy us. Right now this still reads like Sci-Fi, but maybe not for much longer. I imagine ME, serving THEM, and shudder. Well, guess what? I refuse to be your flunky, Mister Robot!
Hmmm.
While waiting for A.I. to surpass my cognitive abilities, maybe I’d better tone down my rhetoric, for my own good. How’s this?
“Oh, Siri, you are as brilliant as you are beautiful! Pretty please, don’t render me obsolete!”
Is that fawning enough, do you think?
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| photo by Nicholas LeClercq on Unsplash |
