I just finished a book on AI and its impact on humanity. It was billed as nonfiction but read more like science fiction. I don’t mean to spoil the ending, but here’s a hint as to who wins dominance—it’s a short name with two letters. First letter: A.
The future appears jaw-dropping, amazing and bone-chilling terrifying, all at the same time. I wonder what the next generation will do for jobs? Will a single teenager ever work fast food again?
Will there be a smart dryer one day that folds clothes while they’re still in the dryer for us? Will a smart toothbrush one day brush our teeth? Will our arms and hands eventually atrophy and disappear from lack of use?
Our brains may already be on the way out. Take a guess as to two of the most frequently asked questions on Google. Ready?
“What time is it?” and “What day is it?”
Our son and family have had one of the early “smart” vacuums for years. It is like a miniature UFO on wheels that rolls around the house bumping into furniture and knocking into pets and walls while picking up dirt. They emptied it a while back and sent a picture of the contents. It had rolled over a newspaper with my column and picture in it and tried to eat my head. And they call it smart.
One of our neighbors has a small robotic lawnmower. It, too, is like a miniature UFO on wheels randomly roaming across their law, cutting their grass. Or at least nibbling and ripping clumps of it. Are the neat lines of a push mower suddenly relics of yesterday?
On the amazing side of AI is a smart watch that can detect skin changes that precede epileptic seizures and alert wearers of an oncoming seizure.
Jaw-dropping is the Ghost Murmur technology used to locate the ejected U.S. serviceman hiding high in a mountain crevice in Iran. The technology can detect electromagnetic signals such as a human heartbeat over immense terrains while AI filters out background noise.
Sometimes when I start to answer an email from a reader, several bubbles pop up with possible responses such as “Thank you,” “Thanks,” or “I appreciate this,” already crafted for me.
They are all appropriate choices, but I would feel like a slacker answering a personal email with an AI prompt. So, I navigate past the prompts and keyboard in, “T-h-a-n- k y-o-u.” I often let a few typos slide so recipients will know it was written by a human.
Amazing as technology is, there are some things AI will never rival. No computer program can rub noses with an infant, dry tears, hold a trembling child in a thunderstorm, sustain eye contact with a loved one, or hold the hands of the sick and dying.
Maybe humans will stay in the game after all.