Edit: the piece's title changed from "Why I Still Boycott AI" with no notice a moment ago, similarly to the other piece recently that switched the name after it hit my inbox.
I agree with Mr. Kahn that saying "Write me a good essay for Persuasion" would be a bad use of his time (and the readers'), but this comes off like people bragging they don't use a search engine. It's either extremely incurious & uncreative or perhaps just dishonest.
What you spent 5 minutes researching a few years ago you can now spend 1 minute typing into a textbox and recieve specifically sources representing a wide gamut of views to spend the remaining 4:45 to read! Any question you though "Ah I'd like to know that but not enough to spend 30 minutes on a deep dive" now can be done in a minute!
Want certain computer tasks done? Ask the robot to step you through using the command line and to teach you the meaning of every step! Want to know if a book in the store is a good for you? Ask it to check reviews to see if they're similar. Curious about the author's past intellectual accomplishments? Just ask. Find a dead link to a paper? Paste the link and context into Claude and it'll find it 9/10, even if the paper isn't on Internet Archive.
I'm confused why we should be proud to not be able to think of these things. Obviously the tech can't do anything previously impossible, but neither could the dishwasher and I haven't read 1% as many essays boasting the author can't find a use for one.
It feels like there's meat here. There are a zillion dumb usecases for AI, and many of them are apparently not *obviously* dumb, and we should warn people about that. But the fact that dishwashers are a stupid way to cook eggs shouldn't scare us off of using them to wash dishes.
Thank you for writing this. I don't care how many times people call me a luddite, I'm just not willing to permanently atrophy my hard-won cognitive abilities just because it's easy and fashionable.
Sam, I tried my own hand at this (essentially an answer to Matt Shumer's provocative "It's inevitable, so use it, get good at it, build your life around it..." essay): https://whowhatwhy.org/culture/god-damn-ai/.
But I was just too damned angry, so mine reads more like a screed. Thank you for keeping yours, well, persuasive.
I, too, see it as a question of agency, at what is a deceptively existential level. Though I am having no trouble at all, so far, drawing a red line where I want it -- Google Translate, for example, being on this side of it, and Claude on the far side -- it seems clear I'm in a dwindling minority. My daughter's young doctoral program colleagues can't tell her where they ate breakfast without help from ChatGPT.
I'm curious: You write of optimization -- always an unsettling concept in my book -- but not of speed, which I see as a huge part of AI's seductive allure. I ask AI enthusiasts this: Where exactly IS it that we're trying to get, and why are we so hell-bent on getting there faster, even if it means trampling each other along the way? Eyes glazed or bright, *no one* has been able to answer that question cogently and convincingly.
Here are a couple of poems of futile resistance:
"I Asked Alice"
On your mark, get set, go!
Where?
I don’t know!
Does it really matter
As long as we’re the first ones there?
Queried the Mad Hatter.
Racing everywhere
Like the White Rabbit!
I’d look into the habit
But I’ve no time to spare.
"Ad Astra"
So we all headed off to the stars.
Of course, some would falter,
Some would put on bursts of speed,
Only to slip, out of kilter,
Lose their grip, drop their load,
Be buried in need, or trampled
In the scramble up the road.
It depends on many things:
Where you start from, your footwear, your will,
What each day brings, whom you exceed.
None shall arrive, but all,
Having been, having been,
Shall know, when they are old, that they have seen
The stars, painted high, faint, and cold.
PS - Frank Fukuyama was my factotum at Telluride, 1973. Alas, I was a confirmed anti-Straussian.
In the past month, I've found myself using AI a lot more. It has made me uneasy, and reading this column made me uneasier still. It's good food for thought.
Two of the tasks I used it for were work things. I don't regret one of these (writing up something brief in corporate-speak that I hate trying to write in myself anyway). The other was a more complex analysis of two books that I feel a little uneasy about, partly because, as a practical matter, checking it for hallucinations will take up as much time as researching it myself might have. But such analysis/research is also a core function of my job--I really should have done this myself. Another task, this one personal--figuring out what was actually behind the local car dealership's attempts to get us to sell them our old 2016 car--was really helpful. No uneasiness there at all. It felt like getting help getting a clear eye on what's basically a legal scam that would have resulted in a car loan we don't need. Finally, the third task--trying to help me cut through the noise about diet and get those last 10 pounds off....that's the one where I come closest to feeling maybe that was a little too personal. On the other hand, it was incredibly helpful, and I've lost two pounds using its advice and recipes.
I'm not going to reject it out of hand yet, but I will try to be more thoughtful about how I use it. The comparison with social media--on which I wasted much time and about which I now feel deeply embarrassed--is well taken.
Edit: the piece's title changed from "Why I Still Boycott AI" with no notice a moment ago, similarly to the other piece recently that switched the name after it hit my inbox.
I agree with Mr. Kahn that saying "Write me a good essay for Persuasion" would be a bad use of his time (and the readers'), but this comes off like people bragging they don't use a search engine. It's either extremely incurious & uncreative or perhaps just dishonest.
What you spent 5 minutes researching a few years ago you can now spend 1 minute typing into a textbox and recieve specifically sources representing a wide gamut of views to spend the remaining 4:45 to read! Any question you though "Ah I'd like to know that but not enough to spend 30 minutes on a deep dive" now can be done in a minute!
Want certain computer tasks done? Ask the robot to step you through using the command line and to teach you the meaning of every step! Want to know if a book in the store is a good for you? Ask it to check reviews to see if they're similar. Curious about the author's past intellectual accomplishments? Just ask. Find a dead link to a paper? Paste the link and context into Claude and it'll find it 9/10, even if the paper isn't on Internet Archive.
I'm confused why we should be proud to not be able to think of these things. Obviously the tech can't do anything previously impossible, but neither could the dishwasher and I haven't read 1% as many essays boasting the author can't find a use for one.
It feels like there's meat here. There are a zillion dumb usecases for AI, and many of them are apparently not *obviously* dumb, and we should warn people about that. But the fact that dishwashers are a stupid way to cook eggs shouldn't scare us off of using them to wash dishes.
Thank you for writing this. I don't care how many times people call me a luddite, I'm just not willing to permanently atrophy my hard-won cognitive abilities just because it's easy and fashionable.
Sam, I tried my own hand at this (essentially an answer to Matt Shumer's provocative "It's inevitable, so use it, get good at it, build your life around it..." essay): https://whowhatwhy.org/culture/god-damn-ai/.
But I was just too damned angry, so mine reads more like a screed. Thank you for keeping yours, well, persuasive.
I, too, see it as a question of agency, at what is a deceptively existential level. Though I am having no trouble at all, so far, drawing a red line where I want it -- Google Translate, for example, being on this side of it, and Claude on the far side -- it seems clear I'm in a dwindling minority. My daughter's young doctoral program colleagues can't tell her where they ate breakfast without help from ChatGPT.
I'm curious: You write of optimization -- always an unsettling concept in my book -- but not of speed, which I see as a huge part of AI's seductive allure. I ask AI enthusiasts this: Where exactly IS it that we're trying to get, and why are we so hell-bent on getting there faster, even if it means trampling each other along the way? Eyes glazed or bright, *no one* has been able to answer that question cogently and convincingly.
Here are a couple of poems of futile resistance:
"I Asked Alice"
On your mark, get set, go!
Where?
I don’t know!
Does it really matter
As long as we’re the first ones there?
Queried the Mad Hatter.
Racing everywhere
Like the White Rabbit!
I’d look into the habit
But I’ve no time to spare.
"Ad Astra"
So we all headed off to the stars.
Of course, some would falter,
Some would put on bursts of speed,
Only to slip, out of kilter,
Lose their grip, drop their load,
Be buried in need, or trampled
In the scramble up the road.
It depends on many things:
Where you start from, your footwear, your will,
What each day brings, whom you exceed.
None shall arrive, but all,
Having been, having been,
Shall know, when they are old, that they have seen
The stars, painted high, faint, and cold.
PS - Frank Fukuyama was my factotum at Telluride, 1973. Alas, I was a confirmed anti-Straussian.
In the past month, I've found myself using AI a lot more. It has made me uneasy, and reading this column made me uneasier still. It's good food for thought.
Two of the tasks I used it for were work things. I don't regret one of these (writing up something brief in corporate-speak that I hate trying to write in myself anyway). The other was a more complex analysis of two books that I feel a little uneasy about, partly because, as a practical matter, checking it for hallucinations will take up as much time as researching it myself might have. But such analysis/research is also a core function of my job--I really should have done this myself. Another task, this one personal--figuring out what was actually behind the local car dealership's attempts to get us to sell them our old 2016 car--was really helpful. No uneasiness there at all. It felt like getting help getting a clear eye on what's basically a legal scam that would have resulted in a car loan we don't need. Finally, the third task--trying to help me cut through the noise about diet and get those last 10 pounds off....that's the one where I come closest to feeling maybe that was a little too personal. On the other hand, it was incredibly helpful, and I've lost two pounds using its advice and recipes.
I'm not going to reject it out of hand yet, but I will try to be more thoughtful about how I use it. The comparison with social media--on which I wasted much time and about which I now feel deeply embarrassed--is well taken.