You can blame those damn WordPress Daily Writing Prompts for what you’re about to read. I don’t take the bait on these very often, but they have been known to launch everything from profanity-filled tirades to epic multi-part biographies.
Today’s installment is a trip through a quote whose level of truth destined it for an eternity of overuse. To get to it, let’s start with the prompt:
What do you think is the future of AI?
View all responses
Whether it’s the weather, horoscopes, or sports nerds arguing about tonight’s game, as a species we’re all suckers for predictions. The dichotomy inherent to that is while we love to guess the future, all too often we ignore the past. This is where the quote comes into play.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
~George Santayana
There’s a reason why Santayana’s words are the key. The best philosophers share a trait with professional gamblers; they know past history is the best indicator of future performance.
First of all, artificial intelligence (A.I.) is just the latest technology advancement that brings out the “Chicken Little” crowd. Nearly 1,000 years ago, Pope Urban II declared the crossbow to be a “murderous and un-Christian weapon” because it could pierce armor and allowed for greater degrees of accuracy and rate of fire. But since the First Crusade was on at the time, he still gave the Papal “okey-dokey” for to using it to kill “heathens.”
In other words, every advancement in history gets it’s potential dampened by the “Boogie-Man” of the unknown. Not only does the allure of the practical uses almost always outweigh the fears, the kryptonite for the “Boogie-Man” lies in historical examples. Crossbows didn’t end the world…and neither will A.I.
The most cautionary tale in all this are the “end of the world” hucksters. My personal favorite example of this was a television snake oil salesman evangelist named Jack Van Impe. I’m not going to link to this clown, but if you want to see for yourself, YouTube is full of this guy’s first-rate hucksterism. He used a never-ending string of Bible quotes stitched together with just enough polished bullshit to give him just enough credibility to keep the donations rolling in.
In that same vein, as long as I’m going back in the annals of classic television, in an episode of My Three Sons “sit-com Dad” Fred MacMurray nailed the effects of A.I. over 60 years ago. After all, this isn’t like the crossbow which didn’t exist one day and was invented the next. The stuff we call A.I. today is really little more than another milestone in the advancement of technology and the evolution in the relationship between man and machine.
The proof is in the video. I’ll just list the stuff that it shows as being “the future;” stuff that didn’t exist in 1965 but are staples of everyday life today.
1) Remote Work/Work From Home: I love how he has that “old-school” time clock in his kitchen. He probably wouldn’t be the sort of guy who today would have a “mouse mover.”
2) Pre-packaged and Pre-determined Meals: Give “meal delivery plans” a web search. You’ll be shocked at how many options there are to have pre-determined meals packaged and delivered to your door.
3) Schedule Management and Video Conferencing: George Orwell should really get the credit for this one, but that doesn’t change the fact these are the bane of any corporate workers’ existence. The screen that talks and can see you is just waaaay too “Big Brother.”
4) People Will Lose Jobs: When one door closes, another one opens. I don’t know anybody still working at the VCR factory, do you? I do know in the town where I live they’re building a gigantic microprocessor/chip factory.
5) E-Sports and E-Gambling: Don’t look now, but this has been happening for a while. The dirty little secret is computer-generated simulations have been used for quite some time to set odds on sporting events.
While technology brought about some changes, did you notice what remained unaffected? The structure of everyday life stayed the same. A.I won’t change that either. People still get up in the morning, eat breakfast, and go to work/school. Don’t forget just few years ago we used the “end of the world” Chicken Little-ism armed with weaponized medicine to force changes to those aspects of daily life. It failed miserably, largely because you can’t force human nature to change. Throughout human history since we walked upright and learned how to use tools, we’ve been told every advance meant the end of days. The perfect illustration is in another quote:
“The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything except our modes of thinking.”
~Albert Einstein
If something that really could end the world won’t change human nature, A.I. sure as hell isn’t going to do so.
The bottom line: The tool itself is never the problem. It’s all about how we use it.
You can see all my WordPress Daily Prompt responses here.
You can see all our signs we are near the end of civilization here.
Got a question, comment, or just want to yell at us? Hit us up at dubsism@yahoo.com, @Dubsism on X, or on our Pinterest, Tumblr, BlueSky, Truth Social, or Instagram, or Facebook pages, and be sure to bookmark Dubsism.com so you don’t miss anything from the most interesting independent sports blog on the web.
