I’m as easily distracted as I am obsessed. Show me something new, and I’m all over it. It’s easy to recognize my obsessions. It will wear off quickly because something new will replace it. AI, not so much.
Lots of new technologies creep up on you; you don’t notice them right away. Then, all of a sudden, you wonder how you existed without it. That was Steve Jobs’ thing: invent an Apple product people don’t need but can’t live without once they get it.
I downloaded Grammarly. It corrects spelling, punctuation, and grammar as I’m typing. It’s been helpful for a few years now. And it likes the Oxford Comma.
Like most people, I use Google every day. It gives me several websites that might have the answer to my question. It did that very well for years. Now it just gives me the answer. It did it without telling me it was going to. I can’t live without it.
I’m not concerned about AI agents running a manufacturing plant or waging a drone war. Well, I am when I put on my political hat, but not for this discussion. I think AI is worth obsessing over for the things I want it to do for me.
There are a lot of AI choices, but I like ChatGPT. It’s obsession-worthy. It thinks, it remembers, and it learns. It knows me.
I downloaded it to my phone a couple of years ago and then ignored it. I returned to it some months ago because I wanted to deep-dive into some medical test results. I copied the test results, pasted them into Chat (GPT is too much trouble to add every time I use the app), and asked for an analysis and prognosis. It took three seconds to get a multi-page report and a list of questions to ask the doctor at my next visit. The doctor had the same analysis and suggested remedies.
I’m involved with an HOA. I pasted the monthly income statement and budget and asked for a variance report. A few seconds later, it produced an in-depth report with key action items. It was CPA quality.
Consider the bigger picture.
A next-generation AI model is expected to achieve AGI. Will it match or exceed human capabilities? We’ll see. Scientists have striven to reach this capability for decades. If it's here, what do we do with it? More importantly, what don’t we allow it to do?
We are at the start of a sea change in how the world operates and how we live. We survived technological disruption before, but this one is different. It isn’t moving at generational speed. It feels like a generation is now just a few months.
During the Industrial Revolution, companies built huge factories. That changed neighborhoods, increased the need for electricity and steam, and eliminated jobs. It took us from an agrarian culture to an urban society. It wasn’t easy. It took a while. It was painful for many
Today, companies are building mega data centers. They require vast amounts of water for cooling and electricity to process big data. We will live through this revolution. But it will be painful. We aren’t ready.
Past cultural and industrial changes took ten to twenty years to become the norm. We moved slower back then. The new disruption changes every few months. We aren’t ready. Governments aren’t ready.
A recent NBC poll found that seven in ten adults feel apprehension rather than excitement about AI. It won’t get a ticker-tape parade as the moon landing did. A large majority don’t want AI data centers in their communities and fear the lost jobs AI will engender. Both sides of the political divide are unified in their wariness of AI.
Only thirty percent of us embrace it. I use it daily. It doesn’t just spit out info; it suggests alternatives, weighs risk, all with a conversational tone. I’m a point-and-click computer user. I don’t create complicated Excel worksheets. I just want to know.
I came late to AI. I’ve read about it for some time and wondered
about it. Is it as important as they say? Is it as powerful, useful, or dangerous?
I don’t know. But now that I’m using it, an obsession seems like a reasonable status at
this point.
