Do We Want A.I. to Help Us Write?
Large language models are coming soon to a word processor near you. What could possibly go wrong?
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last 6 months, you’re probably aware of the new artificial intelligence tools that have sprung onto the scene. While some of the initial hype around software tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney is dying down, the real influence of these A.I. tools is just now beginning. Even now, you can access a GPT-4-powered assistant, Microsoft 365 Copilot, in Microsoft’s Office Suite. Google’s own A.I. assistant is now in beta in Google Docs and Gmail. After joining, every new Doc you open will prompt you to click a button to “Help me write.” So innocuous, right?
These A.I. tools are new, but in many ways raise some of the same questions that we should be asking about any new tool or technology. So often we are captivated by what a tool can do but don’t stop to think a bit more deeply about the influence that it has on us. There are the primary intended effects (e.g., making it easier to get past the blank page problem) but the ones that we should really be thinking about are the deeper structural and cultural changes that are often much harder to spot. Maybe making it easy isn’t really a worthwhile goal on balance.
What can we learn from the past?
I’m growing increasingly convinced that over the next few years, A.I. will significantly change many aspects of our culture in a way not unlike the impact of the industrial revolution. While the specific A.I. tools we’re seeing are new, I think there is a lot we can learn from the contours of previous movements.
As a start, I think we need to continue to talk about what it means to be human. What are our core values? As John Warner pointed out in his excellent post this past weekend, speed and efficiency for speed and efficiency’s sake are not human values. It might be that making something faster is better, but not for the sake of speed itself. If speed is not the goal, then what is? What values help humanity flourish?
Some of the best thinking that I’ve read on this topic recently is from Canadian Physicist Ursula Franklin’s 1989 CBC Massey lecture series titled The Real World of Technology. In it, she highlights the dark underbelly of some elements of so-called “progress.” She writes:
[M]any new technologies and their products have entered the public sphere in a cloud of hope, imagination, and anticipation. In many cases these hopes were to begin with fictional, rather than real; even in the best of circumstances they were vastly exaggerated. Discussion focused largely on individuals, whether users or workers, and promised an easier life with liberation from toil and drudgery. Discourse never seemed to focus on the effects of the use of the same device by a large number of people, nor was there any focus on the organizational and industrial implications of the new technologies, other than in the vaguest of terms.
…
It should be evident by now that there is no such thing as “just introducing” a new gadget to do one particular task. It is foolish to assume that everything else in such a situation will remain the same; all things change when one thing changes. Even the introduction of a dishwasher into a family’s life changes their communication and time patterns, their expectations and the ways in which the family works together.
In the same chapter (Chapter V in case you’re curious), she walks through how these cultural shifts have occurred using the example of the car, washing dishwasher, and sewing machine.
I’m not arguing that we should go back to making all our clothes or washing all our dishes by hand. As a dad to young children, I’m thankful to live in a day and age where we have the convenience of washing machines and dishwashers. But, even if we use the new technology, just using it to make a task faster and easier isn’t enough. We need to ask why. If I replace my nightly ritual of washing dishes by hand with the speed and ease of a dishwasher and use my reclaimed time to spend more time reading books to my kids, it’s hard to argue that it hasn’t improved my quality of life in a real way. If, however, I replace the time that I would have otherwise been washing dishes alongside my wife and kids in the kitchen with an extra 15 minutes scrolling on Twitter, well, maybe I’d be better off washing the dishes.
A.I. tools are coming to a word processor near you. How will we use them responsibly?
The A.I. revolution is here whether we want it or not. While these tools are still rolling out, pretty soon every new document or email you open up will have “The Button.” We’ll be asked (and maybe eventually not even asked) at each and every turn whether we want to do it the hard way via the blank screen or click the button and let the A.I. do the work for us.
I’m not arguing that there aren’t valuable uses for The Button. I think that ChatGPT can be a great tool to help with ideation. But, we must carefully consider the potential side effects. Just because technology makes something easier or faster doesn’t mean it makes it better. To answer that question, we need to look deeper.
Is Augmented Reality a euphemism?
So much of our lives together are already mediated by technology. Many technologies attempt to faithfully reproduce reality as possible. We want our Zoom calls to accurately represent our faces and voices. We want our photos to capture what we are actually seeing. But the new generation of tools is changing this.
Just yesterday, Apple announced its new augmented reality headset, Vision Pro. This headset is our modern vision of glasses: instead of trying to help us to more accurately see the world as it actually is, it isolates us from the outside world by blocking out any light and creating a virtual replica with an overlay of apps. Now you can make eye contact, but only with the EyeSight feature which creates a digital reincarnation of your eyes on the outside glass of the headset. The headline says “EyeSight on Apple Vision Pro makes wearing a headset slightly more human.” I’m not so sure.
Soon we will have the opportunity to replace our digital interface layer with new technologies that will allow us to easily change our appearance or represent ourselves in a way that is increasingly detached from reality. This will happen in our written communication via technologies like the Large Language Models that power ChatGPT but also with physical technologies like EyeSight designed to augment and filter reality. Do we really think that making eye contact with virtual eyes on the front of a piece of curved glass is going to be good for us?
I’m still a bit skeptical about the A.I. doomsday scenarios where “the A.I.s” somehow kill us all. The real doomsday scenario in my mind is less dramatic. It involves a future where we no longer actually interact with each other person to person but entomb ourselves behind A.I.-powered shapeshifters. As we enter this brave new world, let’s temper our optimism and think carefully about the influence these tools will have on us—both as individuals and our collective life together.
Reading Recommendations
John Warner’s Substack questioning our pursuit of speed and efficiency for their own sake.
Ursula Franklin’s The Real World of Technology
What we can learn from the Amish’s rejection of technology that separates us.
Ethan Mollick’s post on “The Button”
The Book Nook
I picked up The Dip by Seth Godin when I saw the Kindle version on sale a few weeks ago. I had heard enough good things from Tim Ferriss about Seth to pique my curiosity and wanted to read some of Seth’s work for myself.
This is a short little book but had some thought-provoking ideas. The big idea I took away was that you need to expect to hit a rut along the way to becoming really good at anything—and if you want to be really good, you need to persist through the rut.
Seth’s message early on in the book summarizes his overall point well:
Quit the wrong stuff.
Stick with the right stuff.
Have the guts to do one of the other.
The Professor Is In
I’ve always been in awe of my students at Harvey Mudd who compete as athletes alongside their studies. The curriculum at Mudd is hard enough even if you are singularly focused on it, never mind if you are spending many hours a week outside of class at practices, matches, games, and the travel associated with them.
This past week I heard the great news from one of my sophomore engineering students, Alisha Chulani, that the Claremont Mudd Scripps (CMS) women’s tennis team was, for a second consecutive year, crowned national NCAA DIII champions.
In the middle of the spring semester, an NCAA film crew came and took some footage on campus for an episode documenting the rivalry between the Claremont Mudd Scripps and Pomona Pitzer tennis teams. Alisha was featured as part of the documentary and there is even some footage of her in the E80 lab working with her robot. You can check out the full documentary on Vimeo here (jump to the 10:00 mark if you want to see the segment about Alisha).
Leisure Line
This last week we visited Five Mile Point Lighthouse in New Haven’s Lighthouse Point Park. In addition to the lighthouse, Lighthouse Point Park is home to the Lighthouse Point Carousel which was built in 1905.
Still Life
This last week we visited Vermont for a family wedding. In the midst of the festivities, we managed to get out in a canoe and spend some time on the lake. The water was beautiful and crystal clear down to the bottom!