At the North Oakland Senior Center the other day, a group of us fell into the very common conversation about AI. A couple of us actually use it. We like it; we're cautious but optimistic. Most of the other Seniors were uneasy. They worried about jobs disappearing, about machines replacing human contact, about a world where you press buttons and never reach a person, where machines make decisions affecting our lives.
The anxiety wasn’t abstract. It was personal, children, grandchildren, the future. AI is not the first time we’ve had fears like these. When television arrived in our homes, when calculators appeared in classrooms, when computers entered offices, when cellphones became universal, people said the same thing. This will ruin us. Children wouldn’t be able to think. We won’t be able to concentrate. People today will lose basic skills. Our minds will turn to mush or worse yet our children’s minds.
AI is different in one important way. It isn’t replacing muscle or just making an existing task faster. It is beginning to do routine brain work; work that required clerks and procedural work by professionals: entering information, sorting it, finding it, organizing it, producing reports. It can write routine documents, compare information, and interpret it. The changes won’t stop at the bottom. They are already reaching into the cubicles of lawyers, accountants, the examining rooms of doctors, and the work of radiologists, any job that requires routine analysis.
During my transition from banker to Park Ranger I got to work as a temp in Morrison and Foerster’s mail room. On my mail rounds I passed cell like offices of associates who spent their days cutting and pasting boilerplate language for briefs and contracts. It reminded me of medieval copyists. Much of that work is already automated. AI will finish the job once it is made foolproof from fictional citations.We have been using technology for centuries to do more work with less labor. Computers eliminated filing cabinets and much of the clerical work force. Every time we make jobs more productive, we create the possibility of having more of what we need with less work.
The question isn't whether AI will eliminate certain kinds of work. It will. The question is what we do with our time and the increase in productivity after those jobs are gone. When we buy a dishwasher do we complain about the time we no longer spend washing dishes. No, we use that time to do things we enjoy; watch TV, read a book, do macrame or maybe more time at our job.
For a number of decades now it doesn’t seem like we’ve been using that saved time to live better. We’ve been using it to produce more, consume more, work more, and make more money for those of us with the new skills required. We were once told that technological progress would give us leisure. Instead, we found ways to make more products working harder and longer.
AI today gives us an opportunity to make that choice again. To revisit the question we haven’t really addressed adequately. What to do with our new productivity?
Where machines can handle more of the basic work of feeding, clothing, housing and organizing schedules, increasing productivity by doing more work with less labor, we create more profit from the same amount of human effort. We can spend that increased wealth on doing other things. It is a remarkable opportunity. If it takes less actual work to provide the things we need, we have more time and resources for things that machines cannot give us: caring for elders, teaching children, restoring wetlands, maintaining public spaces and parks, supporting communities, cooking, making things with our hands, making art, writing poems, welcoming strangers, comforting someone who is frightened.
Some years ago I got to be an EMT in a State Park. When there was a road accident, I showed up. The first thing I did was tell the patient “You’re going to be alright,” and then I gave them what first aid I could and got them ready to go the hospital. Then we waited for the distant ambulance to arrive. Sometimes I would hold their hand or put my hand on their shoulder. Today AI can assess the situation, recommend treatment, come up with a plan, and alert an ambulance. But AI can’t put it’s hand on someone’s shoulder or hold someone’s hand.
The promise of AI should be to free us from work that machines do better, not to eliminate humans but to redirect our efforts to things that only humans can do.
The movie industry is especially anxious about AI, perhaps because AI can already produce the same formulaic, explosion‑heavy content that studios churn out. But that only proves the point: AI threatens the mechanical parts of creativity, not the human ones. The great films, the ones with real imagination, aren’t formulaic, and they aren’t threatened. AI can clear away the tedium, but it won’t replace inspiration.
The gains from increased productivity aren’t shared. If AI eliminates 10 jobs that used to be required, the savings seem to go to the few, the owners, instead of the people making the sacrifice. AI can be used to make life better for everyone.
It’s a political decision. I come from a long line of wage laborers. I’m not opposed to private enterprise. Ownership and markets drive innovation and make economies more efficient. But productivity should strengthen the Commonwealth, not just the ownership class. If the gains from technology are concentrated at the top while everyone else is told to work harder to keep up, we have used innovation to make a few people extraordinarily wealthy rather than to improve the quality of life for all of us.
We can imagine something better.
The Commonwealth is more than the economy. It is the quality of the life we share. If technology gives us more productive capacity and more time, we can use it to improve our parks, schools, neighborhoods, families, public spaces and communities. We can choose to live better rather than simply produce more.
Yes, I’m idealistic. But if we don’t have ideals, what do we have?
AI is here and more is coming. We cannot stop it, and I don’t think we should want to. The question is who is in charge of what happens next? Corporations? Investors? Or the voters.
Productivity should serve life. Innovation should raise the floor for everyone. If machines can do more of the work required to sustain us, then the measure of progress should not be how much harder we work. It should be how much better we can make life for all of us.
This essay was written with AI assistance. Editing is like sanding. I used an electric sander instead of sanding by hand.
No comments:
Post a Comment