This began as a personal observation but will shortly devolve into an examination of boogey men through the ages.
Think back. You an English laborer and it’s roughly 1730 AD. You’re standing there with an ax in your hand looking around at what had been a forest but now looks like an endless sea of stumps. You’ve just chopped down the last tree in England that could yield enough firewood that up until then had kept the few manufacturing plants in existence warm and running. A long-coming energy crisis has finally reached a head. The nation was now out of its traditional energy source.
Then, a few miles down the road, a blacksmith who had been digging coal by hand to run his forge got to thinking about other uses for the coal. He also thought about that black greasy crap that was oozing out of the ground in several areas around him. One of his friends had created a helluva mess by accidentally setting a patch of it on fire. That evening, while worrying about the fate of civilization with the felling of the last tree, the blacksmith and one of his carriage-making buddies, were many pints into less than logical conversations and started talking about some of the little steam toys they’d seen being sold. A little piece of coal was put in and lit. They chugged away and kids loved ‘em. How about making one of those bigger, putting a belt on it and using it to run a saw? Or a blacksmith hammering gizmo? Or, hey…how about substituting that greasy stuff for coal and using it to make a wagon move?
At the time, while the general population was wailing at the government and having fits about losing their jobs, a smaller segment was looking for ways to develop and harness an entirely new form of energy. Screw the trees! They’d use concentrated heat from coal or oil to generate steam to run all sorts of machines. Of course, they’d have to build special buildings to house all this stuff. They decided they would call those “factories”.
It took a few years but the economic damage of the energy crisis came to an end, the economy exploded and took other directions. Right then, what is universally referred to as the First Industrial Revolution took off. That gave birth to trains which, among other things, moved America west. Those who study such things say that revolution ran from 1760-1840.
In case you feel like keeping track, there was also a recognized Second Industrial revolution (1870-1914) that totally changed the world because another energy, electricity, took over and assembly lines were invented. Henry Ford made them an American artform. This was all combined with internal combustion engines and advances in communications like the telegraph and telephones.
We are all now part of what is being recognized as the Third Industrial Revolution 1969-2000s that was, and is, driven by digits. As we’re right now watching computers and attendant artificial intelligence taking over the world, the chest beating and panicked wailing can be heard reverberating across corn fields and even off the walls of the Vatican. Many predict civilization as we know it will be threatened because artificial intelligence will be our undoing.
BULLSHIT!!!!!
Even though I’m a loud-spoken critic of many aspects of AI, yesterday I had an epiphany of sorts and have totally reversed my position. For whatever reason, I suddenly realized we’re experiencing the exact same moment as the woodsman did watching the last fuel-tree in England fall. We’re simply seeing yet another Industrial Revolution moving along. It may make many of us nervous as we view its threats and draw backs but there is one guarantee we can count on: There are hyper intelligent people right now working on the exact things we’re all worried about. There are those amongst us who are definitely going to figure out how to both use AI and control it. This is NOT our first rodeo in controlling revolutions. As a nation and a civilization, we’ve been here before.
It’s hard for many of us to think of life outside of keyboards and such. And we all fear the day our keyboards won’t do what we want them to. Keyboard dependence is very habit forming. And destructive. So, spend some time driving nails or screws, welding or poking holes in paper at 100 yards. Life should not be digit-dependent. foto via Gear Lab
At the beginning of this particular revolution, we watched digits, three-D printing, EV everything explode. As every one of those new technologies have developed we’ve made one halting stop after another in each area. A surge ahead, followed by recognized drawbacks and smarter folks working ways around them. For instance, the concept of electric vehicles (EV) sounds wonderful but right now batteries universally suck and it is predicted that the required rare earths are going to be both our demise and the yielding of control of our own country to foreign governments who have what we need. There’s lots of mental anguish built around that one thing. However, think about it: Right now, Elon or one of his contemporaries are developing batteries that run on something like air and spit. It’s a recognized problem and it will be solved. That’s what those types do. That’s how they make a living.
By far, the biggest complaint/fear about AI is that there’s the possibility of it becoming self-controlling and will turn on us. That’s “singularity” and is not a secret. However, that will be solved because, as with every technological problem, solving it has immense profit potential. That’s a beauty of capitalism: He who protects us from the AI ghost or solves problems in general makes a buck. People don’t develop technologies for the helluvit. That’s their business. Ditto for providing solutions to problems in general. If there’s a profit to be made, folks will line up and put forth the effort needed.
The second resistance to AI is that in many areas it is seen as removing the human mind from the creative process. Given certain inputs it can out-write, out-paint, out-act and out-perform any of us. As much as I hate to admit it, the complaining being heard is simply a lot of us opposing the industrialization of the creative process. Truth is we’re all learning that someone can talk to AI through a keyboard and write a better blog than this one in seconds and with a helluva lot less effort. We all pride ourselves in being able to sculpt a sentence or a tune or whatever in a way that others enjoy and admire. We don’t like the possibility of having a bunch of digits outperform us. However, just as the Model T rendered the horse next to useless, some of us know, not just fear, but deep inside know that the developed skills we think make us unique are becoming available with the push of a button.
The above won’t affect everything. Tangible skills like plumbing, house building, welding, custom car building, etc, anything requiring unplannable physical activity are safe. There the hands are more important than the brain because, while thinking is required, the myriad of unpredictable situations can’t be digitized.
The bottom line is that regardless of what the doom sayers predict, we will all survive and we all cope once we figure out how to work AI into our lives in a meaningful way. No one likes change. However, we should look forward to the result, not the process. That will take some time to stabilize. If there’s a danger to a digit-dependent lifestyle, it is how helpless we might be if digits suddenly disappear. No system is 100% dependable. However, going from one form of life to another can be a bitch, but, as a civilization we’ll survive. We always have. We always will.
Elon, when you get around to reading this, do me a personal favor and get the new battery thing going as soon as you can. Later dude!
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