If the goal was once to ensure a college education for everyone, the more prudent policy now might be to help people develop skills related to outdoor work and other physically demanding jobs. Chatbots can write, but they can’t change a lightbulb. They can’t plumb a house. They can’t heal the sick with a human touch or grow vegetables or perform countless other jobs that fill humanity’s most crucial needs.
For the confused, “GPT” stands for “generative pre-trained transformer,” which refers to how ChatGPT processes, requests and formulates responses. ChatGPT is trained via reinforcement and reward models that rank the best responses. Something like that.
While the reasoning behind the high court’s 6-3 decision on affirmative action is best left to lawyers — speaking of replaceable professions — the implications of the explosive expansion of AI into new arenas should be obvious to anyone.
During a visit with my son, I brought up the subject of AI, and he quickly begged a subject change. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.
“Because it upsets me.”
Unfortunately, he has reason to be worried. A writer with a law degree, he depends on regular clients to earn a living. He’s fine for now, thanks to his unique niche, but other writers similarly situated have lost their entire client lists overnight. Post tech reporters Pranshu Verma and Gerrit De Vynck recently described a Bloomingdale, Ill., writer, Eric Fein, whose clients — all of them — notified him that they were “transitioning” to AI. Is anyone not transitioning these days?
Fein has returned to school to become an HVAC technician. Another displaced writer, this one in San Francisco, has started a job as a dog walker.
Amid the disruption, irony remains fully employed. Is technology, in replacing humans, also making us more human? More time spent outdoors is surely healthier than sitting at a desk for hours a day. If more people turn to skilled labor, might we finally be able to find dependable help on household troubles beyond our ken?
A forthcoming “wearable AI assistant” from a company called Humane is meant to revolutionize both technology and humanity. Imran Chaudhri, Humane’s co-founder and chairman, describes his pocket-size invention as intentionally humanizing, because it eliminates the need for devices — smart phones, watches, even computers — that act as barriers to human interaction. Chaudhri’s device performs the functions of all the above and more, using the palm of the hand as a display screen so your face is free to express emotions, make eye contact and, not least, see where you’re going.
Such developments are both frightening and exhilarating. The possibilities for liberation and creativity are limited only by the imagination. But the threat to life as we know it — and especially to white-collar (or work-at-home-hoodie) jobs — is potentially catastrophic.
On the bright side, AI isn’t always so smart. Or, rather, it’s smart in a Vulcan way. All brain, no emotion, makes for a lousy human. Writers can be replaced if all you need is a user manual, but AI doesn’t have the emotional depth or experiential memory to write beautifully, using just the right word or nuance. An algorithm might come up with the likeliest word used by most people most of the time, but a good writer knows better ones. Voice and style are as individual as a fingerprint.
At least one of Fein’s clients has realized that his content was better than AI’s and has returned. Others decided that the quality sacrifice was worth the cost savings. Humans, after all, need steady salaries and health benefits, vacations, sick days and family leave. AI needs nothing.
We can’t at this point see exactly how AI might evolve. We know instinctively that the good often is shadowed by the bad. How many ways will we regret our eager embrace of machine over man? Of such is science fiction written, though I suspect AI would be a lousy author. Great literature comes to us from people who have dug deep into their psyches, experiences, sorrows, triumphs, fears, losses and aspirations.
I do wonder about all the folks who no longer will be admitted to colleges and universities because they don’t meet certain data-driven standards and, therefore, won’t have the opportunity to study humankind’s greatest achievements.
The immediate losers will be the students of color who might have benefited from affirmative action. But in the longer run, the real loser might well be academia. Young men already have abandoned college in huge numbers, leaving women to dominate in many fields that AI loves. Add Black and Brown young people to decreasing enrollments and who’s left? And who will teach? AI, I’m afraid.
The Supreme Court says affirmative action belongs to another generation and is no longer needed. It would be nice to think so, but my hunch is that many Americans would agree with Suzanne Szostak, co-innkeeper of Mine + Farm, my favorite getaway here in Sonoma County. Commenting on the ruling, she said, “I just wish the Supreme Court was an AI chatbot right now.”
