On technology, and what we need to do to keep humanity in play

Ah, google docs. What a mess. I have an editor who is trying to share her suggestions with me about a poem they are publishing-- and since she's put it in a google doc, and my regular email is not a google one, I can't access the file. I think we've got it figured out. She'll have to send it to my alternate email (a google one). 

What a mess. We were all sold a real bill of goods when they said computers were going to make life simpler. Look at the mess in NJ over the glitch that enrolled 6K+ people in the voting rolls who didn't even ask to be put there. And let's get all sticky with the messes that computer issues have caused with autopay, bank errors, and now...AI jumping the fence that the creators have put around it, and it just goes ahead and does what it wants. And yes, I'm aware that I'm awarding sentience to a non-living entity, but this stuff is wildly scary. 

It's bad enough that companies are shifting to AI to do human jobs-- what the hell are we supposed to do to keep body and soul together? This robot-tutor in classrooms biz is sketchy (especially since the humanoid part is, as I read, being created by the same fine folks who are making sex dolls)-- yeah, it's weird and awful and insulting. There's already enough worry to go around with kids making romantic connections with chat bots and then killing themselves or others, and now this? I don't see good things coming from this. They didn't have to make the robot tutor look so "appealing"-- but they did. (Actually, they didn't have to make a robot teacher.) Making it attractive is deception writ large-- we are drawn to like things that are attractive, and the tech behind the pretty face will be the wolf in sheep's clothing. 

If we are heading for not just a post-literate society (horribly awful), but a post-employment one as well (as is the setting for Klara and the Sun, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, etc.), then we are facing a truly terrifying paradigm shift. People must have a sense of purpose. The psychological, economic, social, and spiritual damage that AI is setting the stage for is cataclysmic. 

Just because we can do something, does not mean that we should. The morally corrupt and bankrupt humans who are foisting this mess on us are playing with something that is truly damaging to not only the environment, but to humanity as a whole. We are not safe, and without some sane humans in charge, humanity will not remain in ascendency on this planet. I know-- sounds overly dramatic. But we've been warned, over and over again, by both fiction and science, and the billionaires do not care about anything but the thrill and the money. Once AI decides humans are not necessary, the route to health care, food, water, shelter, and so on will be closed. If it can hack just about anything, then nuclear war is out of human moral control, too. 

I'm going to fight this with the tools I have: I can read, think, and write. I can talk and teach, as long as they'll let me. And I hope that, like the hobos in F451, we can preserve enough of what matters, what makes us human, so we might be able to start again. 

Sorry for the dark tone today. I am worried. 

Hugs,

C