The bold new frontier of AI is being paved before our very eyes. However smart as it seems to be, this tool and humanity cannot coexist under the hypothetical Wall-E future that so many people seem to be foretelling.
We say that the internet allows for information at your fingertips, but AI forces it into the palm of your hand. AI has changed the way we work, leaving a lot of people worried it will put them out of a job. Then, there is the minority, including the old grumpy people like me who think the power of AI is blown out of proportion.
Most humans like work. People say they don’t like work, or that they don’t like their job, but most of us are not built to go on an endless vacation. Here’s a conversation you may have heard before as a college student:
“Hey dude, how was your summer break?” said student 1.
“Good, but I’m ready to go back to school,” said student 2.
Sometimes we say that all we want is more free time, but when we get too much, we go crazy. It’s fun for a little while, but we are not beings who were meant to do nothing. We use hobbies to satiate free time that our ancestors spent looking for walnuts in the woods. If AI calls our bluff and starts doing all the heavy lifting for us, it won’t feel right.
True, you could argue that the growth of the world economy may require a more automated sector, and the everyman has no way to stop it. But there are humans all over the chain, and at some point, they will get fed up with chatting with a robot. Not just at work, but in all aspects of life. Take this moral from a story about going out to buy an envelope from author Kurt Vonnegut:
“The moral of the story is — we’re here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And what the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And it’s like we’re not supposed to dance at all anymore.”
Humans have always had this fear of robots taking over the earth, even before AI existed. Vonnegut knows that computers can never understand the human spirit, and humans will tire of them eventually.
People like talking to people and experiencing some social semblance of what our ancestors had. We are social animals, and nothing will ever change that. Sure, talking to the chatbot and using automation for some parts of our lives is fun and easy sometimes, but it’s not the same as getting lost in the grocery store looking for the soup, and then finding a bunch of frozen pizzas that were half off.
It’s not just the social element, either — the environmental cost of AI is staggering. Servers require a hefty amount of water to cool them down and keep them functioning. According to the Washington Post, a 100-word email written by ChatGPT is equivalent to one bottle of water and enough electricity to run 14 lightbulbs for one hour.
Who is to say it will always be that way? Some environmental crises have the habit of biting us in the rear, but the human response can work wonders. For example, the repair of the hole in the ozone layer caused by manmade chemicals is a success story of environmental rehabilitation, one that could be replicated after the footprint of AI.
Don’t get it twisted, I think AI is a great tool, but it’s just that. A tool. Nothing more. We don’t need it to flip our society upside down. It can watch us dance, but it won’t stop us.
2025-02-26