Balance with Technology through Mastery of Technology
I recently watched the 2023 film The Creator, starring John David Washington. It presents a futuristic Earth where humans are at war with AI. Not the Terminator type of AI with Skynet, but one in which the AI beings are the good guys who wish to live alongside humans. Science fiction aside, this idea of people living alongside tech is an unappreciated concept. Humans have always done it, whether it was learning to live with the wheel and plow, or living in the year 2014 with Alexa on a first generation Echo. Until recently, with the possible exception of the early days of the atomic age, there seems to have always been a balance between the physical/analog world and the tech that it controlled. Recently however, the rapid advances in generative AI and super-computing is beginning to make many wonder whether this balance can be sustained.
And before I start sounding like a tech Luddite who might have said the same thing centuries ago, I believe most people people who study technology would agree that something does feel different this time. Whether it’s because there are now algorithms that seem to know us better than we know ourselves (see The Social Dilemma), or because some military advances have the potential to rewrite modern deterrence theory (see DragonFire), technological development and its consequences, seem closer than ever to escape our control.
The solution then would seem to me to be the intentional return to the balance where we work to control the tech around us without abandoning the benefits they gives us. First at a societal level, but also in our private lives. For example, if you tell your Alexa enabled device to turn on the lights, and it responds “I don’t understand,” or worse “I can’t help you with that”, you don’t throw away your device, you master it by learning it, and training it to work for you (although I admit I’ve been tempted to trash my Echo Spot several times). Imagine one day when some corporation places an Alexa-type brain atop a humanoid robot with limbs, what then? It’s not science fiction, because it’s already happening (see Tesla Bot). If we don’t work to master the tech around us, we’ll only have ourselves to blame when things go wrong. The creator can’t blame a creature that lacks choice. And that should give us all Skynet vibes. As I’ve stated before, we don’t need to completely understand tech in order to control it. Just look at how we control the Internet. We also don’t need to fall in love with technology, just with the learning of it. Failing to master tech may mean it master us. The balance with technology can be sustained, but it’s on us to make it happen.
To that end, keep learning. AI and web related trainings are available on LMITrainings.com
