To 'AI' or not to 'AI' that is the question.

“I wanted to be a rock star, instead I became an engineer.” When I got married, my wife and I created a picture poster to introduce us to the other’s friends and families at the wedding reception. That line was under a picture of me holding my electric guitar. In an earlier version of me, that was a statement that could be used to describe me. I went and saw great guitar players in person and recall two in particular; Joe Satriani and Bo Diddley. By every measure, Joe was a better guitarist, but I enjoyed Bo so much more. Why? Read to the end.

Hopefully, this week’s blog post generates thought and intellectual debate. I honestly don’t know where I stand on the subject, but will take the side that is counter to most I’ve talked to in the creative community. I believe that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is beneficial and should not be shunned in the community.

My arguments will not center around the “If AI is allowed, eventually HAL 9000, Ultron, or the Terminator will take over humanity. That very much may happen, but there are so many other mass extinction possibilities available to us that I fear those will happen before AI evolves to a point where it is adversarial to humanity. But, if that is your fear then it is probably not an argument that I can refute. I do believe that the AI benefit is far greater than that risk, but that is more of a feeling like, “I like warm sunny weather more than I do chilly rainy weather.” I’ve not set out a logical argument for why I do like warmer weather more, I just know that I do.

The premise or conclusion I want to refute is: “AI should not be allowed because it takes jobs from people.”

On my dad’s side if you trace back a few generations you have me, an engineering executive who will turn a future author. Then you have my father, who spent his career in multiple factory roles. Eventually, he ended up programing robots to paint semi-truck tractors. His father, who I vaguely remember, was a truck driver. To his father, the last of a long line of farmers.

During the Industrial Revolution, civilization moved from an agrarian society to an industrial one. That was made possible by the invention and refinement of technology. Every one of those refinements was accompanied by arguments that this technology will take jobs. When our forefathers were living during that time, there was stress about how this <insert technological advancement here> will “Make me lose my job.” When my grandfather started as a truck driver I am sure he joined a very large union that you may have heard of. They were called the Teamsters.

I remember as a young lad distinctively asking my father, “Dad what is a Teamster?” He gave me a long-detailed description about this organization’s benefits to the world (my father himself was a lifelong member of the United Auto Workers or UAW). I had to stop him because that wasn’t what I meant by my question. “But Dad, why don’t they call themselves the Truckers?”

A figurative lightbulb shown in his eyes, and he went on to tell me how before big diesel-powered tractor trailers would pull our goods from place to place, that task would be done by wagons pulled by teams of horses. A person who would manage and drive those teams of horses was called a Teamster. I am sure that when trucks began to replace horses, many people were worried about losing their jobs. But, they found new skills and the world was a better place for it. Now goods could be easily transported from the Atlantic to inland or in some cases all the way across the continent, though railroads had already relieved that burden.

In my father’s time as a factory worker, he became a pretty good industrial painter. His job was to apply new paint to semi tractors as they progressed from raw materials to big rigs. He had to wear equipment to protect him from industrial chemicals. Though as I write this and think about his cause of death, pulmonary fibrosis, it might not have protected him enough. Anyway, overtime his job was replaced by something without lungs—an industrial robot. He was replaced by a simplified version of R2-D2. Instead of complaining about losing his job, he learned how to program robots. Upskilling and in effect increasing his value for his company, which in turn opened him up to a higher salary and a better life.

In my job, I’ve spent many hours doing routine and mundane tasks that could be replaced by AI. As a very poor student of grammar and spelling from an early age. I can’t imagine a world where I would in the future be able to put my fantastical thoughts down and communicate them to you. Without a little tech help from MS Word, highlighting misspelled words and pointing out where I missed a coma, this blog would not be close to readable. Technology can and should be used to supplement our daily lives, to make us better and to enable those of us with ‘intellectual disabilities’ to participate in a world where without technology it wouldn’t be possible.

I’ve seen situations where AI and Deep Learning have been inserted into my products that aid in the discovery of pre-cancer inside a person’s body, thus saving their life. I hadn’t heard a single doctor complain about how AI is taking her job or a single patient that hasn’t been grateful that this technology could take over the world.

So, that is all well and good M.B. I hear you saying it. Those are non-artistic jobs and tasks you are talking about. True, very true. But, selective use of AI can make your work better artsy dude. In writing, I cannot think of a world where someone says “Write me an epic fantasy centered around a diminutive race of humanoids. An epic battle between this lowly race and an ancient evil,” and a computer spits out The Lord of the Rings. But, I do see me asking a computer to create a character profile for a man who is Enneagram 3 wing 4 in his late thirties and letting it do that prework. That is a character that I started to build yesterday instead of writing 1,000 words, which was my goal when I woke up at 5:00am to do my shift as a part-time author. I can also let the computer generate some insignificant graphics for this blog post. When given the choice of paying someone to put graphics together for this free blog post or having no graphics, then selecting AI generated graphics aren’t a bad option. I mean I hope you aren’t just looking at the picture at the top of the page.

AI may become your Joe Satriani, but it will never ever become your Bo Diddley. Joe was a technical genius, and Bo? Well Bo, played from his heart, not his intelligence.