Alright, so the latest buzz isn’t just the cheap gin rattling my teeth, it’s this whole “AI” thing. Some suit at Forbes, probably sipping a $20 kombucha, is wondering how we’re all feeling about it. Feeling? Lady, I’m usually feeling for my smokes, my next drink, or a reason to get out of bed before noon. But AI? Yeah, I got feelings about that, same as I got feelings about a landlord with a new set of eviction papers.
Trust, they say. That’s the magic word. Like “open bar” or “last call, on the house.” Apparently, we need to trust these thinking contraptions before we let them run our lives, our jobs, our… well, everything. Some “experts” – and you know how I feel about experts, they’re usually experts at getting grants or a corner office – they’re all gung-ho. The Pew Research folks, bless their data-sorting hearts, found that most regular Joes and Janes out there are about as enthusiastic about AI as they are about a surprise audit from the IRS. They think it’s gonna screw the country and, more importantly, screw them personally.
But get this: the “AI experts,” the high priests in their lab coats and stock options, they’re singing a different tune. They see sunshine and rainbows, probably made of pure, unadulterated profit. Makes sense, don’t it? If you’re building the damn things, you’re gonna tell everyone they cure cancer and make your johnson bigger. You’re not gonna say, “Yeah, this baby might just decide humanity is a virus and go all Skynet on your ass.” Bad for business. It’s like asking a bartender if you’ve had too much. He’s got a tab to think about.
And the kicker? Elections. Zero percent – you heard me, zero – of the public think AI is gonna be a good influence there. Even the so-called experts are cagey, only 11% of them willing to stick their necks out and say it’s a good idea. Zero percent! That’s a number even I can get behind. Means everyone, from the guy muttering to pigeons in the park to the dame in the penthouse, agrees on one thing: letting these algorithms mess with who runs the zoo is a goddamn nightmare waiting to happen. I’ll drink to that consensus. Hell, I’m drinking to it right now. Need to refill this glass.
Then you got this fella, Juan Enriquez. Sounds like a guy who knows his way around a bottle of tequila, but he’s talking about AI. He says his outlook on AI changes with the days of the week. Mondays and Tuesdays, he’s all rah-rah, future’s bright. Wednesday, he’s on the fence. Thursdays and Fridays, it’s Armageddon time. Then he takes the weekends off. Smart man. My weeks are kinda like that, only it’s less about AI and more about the dwindling contents of a whiskey bottle and the looming dread of having to write another one of these things to keep the lights on. Or at least keep the cheap whiskey flowing. The weekends, yeah, those are for staring at the walls and contemplating the cosmic joke of it all. Good to know the big thinkers are just as screwed up as the rest of us, just with fancier jargon.
Enriquez also yaps about the history of IT, punch cards, Babbage, Turing – guys who had the big ideas but not the “horsepower,” he says. Like having a thirst for the good stuff but only finding watered-down beer. He even mentions ELIZA, the first AI shrink back in ‘66. Said a lot of people prefer talking to a machine. “Why?” he asks. “Because it’s more empathetic.”
Hold the phone. A machine is more empathetic? Jesus H. Christ on a crutch. That’s not a testament to the machine, pal, that’s a goddamn indictment of the human race. If people are finding more warmth and understanding from a pile of code than from their fellow bags of flesh and bone, then we’re already halfway to hell in a handbasket. Maybe the machine doesn’t interrupt, or judge you for ordering another double, or try to sell you its screenplay. Is that empathy, or just a well-programmed lack of annoying human traits? I’ve known barstools with more personality. And better listeners, sometimes. At least they don’t tell you your fly’s undone when you’re trying to make a profound point about the futility of existence. This calls for another cigarette.
And the speed of this AI stuff, Enriquez says, it’s like a runaway train. Adoption curves getting shorter, ChatGPT spreading faster than a cheap rumor in a dive bar. Yeah, no kidding. We went from “what’s a chatbot?” to “my kid’s using it to cheat on his homework” in about the time it takes me to finish a smoke. It’s like everyone’s rushing to plug into the Matrix without even reading the damn instruction manual. And you know who writes those manuals? Guys like me, probably three sheets to the wind, trying to make sense of something nobody fully understands.
Here’s another pearl from this Enriquez fella: calling it “AI” is a mistake. It’s “AIs,” plural. Each one a different beast, its own “digital brain,” its own “neural build.” Like us, he says. Oh, that’s just dandy. So instead of one potentially malevolent super-brain, we’re cultivating a whole damn menagerie of them. An “evolutionary tree of life” for machines. Great. Just what we needed. More things evolving without opposable thumbs but with the power to, say, decide my credit score based on how many typos I make after midnight. Can you imagine the arguments? One AI telling another, “Your algorithm is crap!” “No, your dataset is biased!” Sounds like a typical Tuesday night at the No Shame Saloon, only with less spilled beer and more existential threat.
He asks the big questions, this Enriquez: “How far should we go? How fast should we go? What happens if we can’t understand what those machines are doing or saying?” Good questions. The kind you ponder when you’re on your fifth whiskey and the bartender’s starting to look like a friendly walrus. The answers? Probably not so good. We’ve never been good at knowing when to stop, have we? We’re like a degenerate gambler on a losing streak, always thinking the next roll will be the big one. And not understanding what they’re doing or saying? Hell, I barely understand what humans are doing or saying half the time. At least with a drunk, you can usually guess they want another drink or a fight. With these “AIs,” who knows? Maybe they’re just calculating the optimal way to turn us all into paperclips. Or worse, into content creators for their new inter-AI social media platform. The horror.
Then comes the real gut-punch, the thing that makes you wanna reach for something stronger than coffee. Enriquez proposes a new Turing test for robots: “take a robot, drop it off anywhere in the city, have it be able to get into the house, find the kitchen, make a cup of coffee.” Sounds simple, right? Like tying your shoes. But think about it. Navigating a strange city, breaking into a house (or figuring out the damn smart lock), locating the kitchen, and then… the coffee. French press? Drip? Nescafé, God forbid? Grind the beans? Where are the beans? The filters? The goddamn sugar?
It’s a beautiful, absurd little nightmare. And here’s the stinger: “The consequences of the machine being able to make a cup of coffee in a city is that all labor becomes 25 cents an hour.”
Twenty-five cents an hour.
Let that sink in. All that human sweat, all those aching backs, all those dreams of a slightly less miserable tomorrow, all boiled down to the price of a gumball. So we build these magnificent bastards to make us a cup of coffee, and in return, they make human endeavor worthless. That’s a hell of a trade. Suddenly, my years at the post office sorting mail for peanuts don’t seem so bad. At least the machines then just jammed or ate the letters. They didn’t plot to make me obsolete while brewing a perfect macchiato.
What’ll it take to win us over? Making coffee? Helping with a medical diagnosis? I don’t know. Maybe if one of these AIs could reliably pick winning horses, or tell me which dame at the bar is actually going to laugh at my jokes instead of calling the cops. Or better yet, invent a hangover cure that actually works, instead of just more hair of the dog.
But “digital brethren”? “Helpers and assistants”? That sounds like the kind of fluff they feed you before they stick the knife in. Trust. It’s a fragile thing. Easy to break, hard to earn back. Like a good bottle of bourbon, once it’s gone, it’s gone. And right now, looking at these shiny new gods we’re building in our own flawed image, I’m thinking I’ll keep my trust, and my bourbon, to myself.
For now, I’m just gonna pour another. And maybe see if my toaster is looking at me funny.
Chinaski out. Time to find a bottom to this glass.
Source: How Are We Feeling About AI?