What We've Got

There are doomers who say that the end of humanity is just a few clicks away as AI continues to advance. There is still mystery behind its workings, but there is no doubt that it will be a force that cracks society into pieces.

The short-term dangers are clear: job replacement, concentration of power and capital, massive energy consumption, emotional attachment to chatbots. The longer-term dangers vary depending on your point of view and access to the raw models that haven't been scrubbed for consumer consumption like ChatGPT. I don't subscribe to the future state where we all die. It would take a lot to exterminate humanity, even if you consider us pests.

I do think we are now fundamentally changed, and that the speed at which this will all happen will be faster than we think. If you are not engaged in this ongoing transformation, you do so at your own peril.

Yet, I am not ready to throw in the towel and nihilist this shit up. I do think knowledge work is going away. I think programming will no longer be necessary or at least very much diminished for many in the profession. I do think that mechanical replacement for physical work like driving, construction, and manufacturing is coming. This all weighs heavily on my mind as our kids are growing up and being thrown into a new world with a completely pre-AI toolkit.

The past few days I have spent time in a sort of retreat with some old friends in Hana, probably the most beautiful place on earth. No joke. The. Most. Beautiful. I dare you to visit the way that we did and come away with a different conclusion. As the sun dappled down through the mist, falling through holes in the canopy, there was no doubt that AI would not replace that. With all the fretting we (I) do, we forget that the rocks, the ocean, the sun will go on as they must. There is impossible beauty that is above the questions of whether AI will replace us. AI may replace programmers, but the heaving, breathing ocean will not care.

Under the sun and amongst the waves were we the people, bobbing and loping to and fro. Lanky, flopping with awkward hands. Huddling in families. Laughing. Running to make way for the white water tumbling across black sands. Young women holding hands and chaining together to venture further out. Boys performing on boards. Living goddesses in green capturing the sun as if its warmth existed only for her to share.

All of these humans doing nothing, just walking between the land and the roiling sunset dragons above. Witnesses, present and conscious with sand in their toes and salt drying on their skin.

Hey AI, you might best us in lawyering, doctoring, programming, data entering, managing, teaching, therapy, writing, real estate, manipulating, lying, money making, commerce, crypto, driving, flying, and warfare but you'll never best us, your best friends the humans, at being alive at the ocean's edge.

Please don't be too jealous.