It’s complicated, but I’m not talking about the 2009 romcom (romantic comedy) of the same name. The modern world is complicated.
William Wordsworth wrote the poem, “The World Is Too Much With Us,” lamenting that the world has lost connection with nature. I enjoy the outdoors and especially our Smoky Mountains, but I admit that I’m a city boy who likes his modern conveniences and technology. And my concerns are greater than just the natural world.
I’m curious about a lot of things and my iPhone and the Internet ease my curiosity-itch. I am science-oriented, but I’ve come to appreciate good writing, even poetry – as long as the poem is pithy. My favorite poets, Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost, seem able to create beautiful imagery with fewer words.
The world is more complicated than in times past. Wordsworth was never put on “hold” and forced to listen to terrible phone music because there were no telephones. And he never interacted with a bot on an information chat line because this tech was 150 years in the future.
I am a 20th century man trying to navigate a 21st century world. Of course, that is a bit of hyperbole. I am not lamenting, just explaining the challenges of my time. I remember my grandmother telling me about her first encounter with an automobile. A Model T spooked her horse, which bucked her to the ground. I feel like I’ve been riding a bucking bronco for the last several months, dealing with an Amazon AI in Seattle that routes the company’s delivery vehicles through our property to an adjoining development.
Some years ago, we added a gravel service road as an alternate exit from the back of our 20-acre property. We share the paved main driveway entrance with my daughter’s home. Unfortunately, the Seattle routing system AI discovered our gravel road and is now directing all deliveries to an adjoining neighborhood through our property using the gravel road. We now have large Amazon trucks, as well as contract drivers who rarely speak English, zooming through our property, endangering dogs, horses, chickens and my grandchildren on their golf cart. I was almost hit by an Amazon truck pulling out of my barn.
You would think that reporting this to Amazon could resolve the issue by changing the routing instructions to their drivers to use the development’s entrance off Woodson Drive. And yet our calls and discussions with a dozen Amazon employees across the country have been unable to override the routing AI.
We were even told by Amazon employees to call our sheriff. That didn’t work because our call to the constable was shunted through multiple departments and finally I felt like Kevin’s mother in the movie “Home Alone,” frantically trying to explain the situation to a donut-eating gendarme.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is artificial because it was made by man, but it is not yet intelligent. There is concern that AI will soon become more advanced and powerful than its creators and escape human control as in the movie “Terminator.” This recently happened when OpenAI models escaped confinement for four days and launched 17,600 hacking attacks.
Elon Musk is no Luddite, but has been vocal in his AI concerns. Nor am I a technology Luddite, named after a 19th-century Englishman who resisted automation in the textile industry.
Anthropologists have posited that curiosity is a survival trait for humans. Einstein once said, “I am neither especially clever nor especially gifted. I am only very, very curious.”
The Internet is a godsend for me. And I use AI as a tool, but resist its Siren Song of blindly accepting the “answers” it spits out.
I use Duck Duck Go as my search engine (purportedly it doesn’t track me as does Google), and with each search an AI option called “search assist” is available. I also use Grok and have ChatGPT, though I have used it less often.
Anyone who searches the Internet for answers or uses AI should remember that AI merely searches widely through the Internet at the speed of light, gathering data that you requested. And the answers it gives are only as good as the data sifted, collected and organized in written form for you.
I follow tech guru Kim Komando who recently advised that you should specify “respected” sources in your AI searches. But is there a standard for a respected source?
Philosopher Immanuel Kant said you should seek facts that are “universally” accepted as true by all people at all times. Would data/information from CNN, the Mayo Clinic or the NY Times be respected sources? Komando also advised that you specify a list of the sources the AI tool used.
You might be educated by the data presented, but would that make you wise, a process requiring discernment or the proper use of information? It’s complicated.
I know educated people who are not wise, and I know people who are not formally educated who have what we call street smarts or common sense.
I no longer practice medicine, but I can see the value of using an AI tool. The danger is omitting the fuzzy logic of a human brain and relying on machine algorithms (problem solving by repetition).
I recently read of a lawsuit by a patient who had a bad medical outcome after taking the advice of ChatGPT, while ignoring the advice from friends to see a doctor. Amazon’s Ask a Doctor offered me a “chat” with a doctor who actually was an online “doctor’s assistant.” And I saw a TV ad of a man taking a picture of his sore toe and submitting it to a chat line for a diagnosis and treatment advice.
Conversely, I read of AI aiding the development of targeted cancer therapy by searching for the right key (drug) to fit into the specific cellular lock (receptor) of cancer cells. And the Mayo Clinic is reportedly using AI to diagnose pancreatic cancer earlier.
I am blessed to be living in the information age and to have tools that help me keep learning, thinking and expanding my horizon. Socrates once said that the “unexamined life” is not meaningful or worth living. In other words, an examined life is one of self-reflection and critical thinking.
The world is complicated and evolving, but wondrous. I am blessed to still have my wits and the tools to help me appreciate God’s magnificent creation.
