I am Firing My AI Agent!

Is there anyone not sick and tired of hearing about AI?  If we are on the edge of humanity’s destruction. please just get it over with and stop talking about it.

I imagine there are wonderful things that AI will do in this world, or at least that is what every self-pronounced expert is telling us.  And I also can believe that there are great dangers lurking in the shadows as AI evolves.  It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to envision all sorts of different outcomes of the global race to dominate in AI.  And given the current adversarial nature of politics and the world community, the direction that competition will take could be catastrophic.

 

Still, who knows, maybe AI will come up with a great plan for dealing with climate change, or map out a cure for cancer, or solve the thorny issue of how to build a fusion power plant.  Maybe AI agents will act as mediators and negotiators between warring countries or design a worldwide trade policy that benefits everyone equally, or solve the developing nation debt problem.  I kind of doubt it, but we can always hope!

 

But listen, Mr. AI Agent, keep your nose out of my business!  I don’t want a personal AI agent telling me everything I should be doing, planning my day, measuring my progress, feeding me information, advising me on what to wear or when to exercise. I don't want an AI agent chastising me for sleeping poorly or not moving often enough or not stopping to rest while driving. I don’t want an AI agent writing my blogs, giving me song ideas, completing my sentences, or jogging my memory.  I don’t want an AI agent suggesting future purchases I should consider, or advising me on career choices.  (OK, I’m retired so that isn’t really relevant).

 

I spent my whole career in technology, and I fully appreciate the amazing advances that computers and information technology have made.  But I detest technology’s intrusion into my life and the assumption that I must purchase every new gadget and keep up with every new trend in social media. And I can’t even imagine what the raging juggernaut of AI will force upon us in the coming years.  

 

At the risk of seeming curmudgeonly or even worse, old, I proclaim that I will fiercely resist any AI agent that comes my way, no matter what promises it makes of improving my life.  I will fire the damn thing and, if necessary, throw my phone and iPad into the lake.  This, I do solemnly swear! 

The Somewhat Sisyphean Nature of Human Existence

Recently I had a significant period of time where I stopped playing guitar – a couple of week’s vacation and then a few weeks focused on a very joyful event: the birth of our grandson, Oliver.  When I started to play again this week the callouses on my fingers were pretty much gone and I had to start the mildly painful process of getting them back again.

The Greek myth of Sisyphus depicts a man forced by the Gods to endlessly roll an immense boulder up a hill only for it to roll back down again.  The myth is seen by some as a symbol of the absurdity of existence or the futility of human striving.  But I see a lot of my life in the myth of Sisyphus and I don’t regard it as necessarily absurd or futile, though it is sometimes frustrating.

 

The truth is that I find myself repeating a lot of the efforts of my life.  I go to the gym for a period of time and then take a break or get injured.  When I return, I have to go through the process of building up my stamina and strength again.  The same goes for running (back when I used to run) or cycling.  My many years of soccer waxed and waned and I found my skill level had to be re-acquired through practice and play each time I took a significant break.

 

I am currently studying French and Spanish, and I am slowly building competence in listening, reading and speaking.  But any time away from these studies causes the boulder to roll back a bit and I must re-commit myself to the task and build up my comprehension again.

 

The same goes for many other areas of study or knowledge.  I find my grasp of history fades and I will periodically refresh it through reading books and doing Internet research.  I have learned and re-learned mathematics and physics many, many times as the need has arisen (going back for a masters then a PhD; teaching IB math; tutoring in math and physics).  

 

Or consider the routine tasks of life – cleaning the house, maintaining the landscaping, even conducting one’s daily hygiene.  These are all Sisyphean tasks.  The house is clean, then slowly gets dirty.  The lawn is cut, the grass grows back.  The beard is shaven, it returns.

 

The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of an isolated system left to spontaneous evolution cannot decrease with time.  Entropy is a measure of disorder.  It takes energy to make order out of disorder, knowledge out of ignorance and skill out of incompetence.  

 

We supply that energy to all the different facets of our lives and we proudly observe the order that results, but inevitably the boulder rolls back a bit, or even all the way and we must exert ourselves anew.  There may be a few places where we are able to hold the boulder at bay, or a few more challenging hills where our efforts continue to push the boulder ever higher, but at some point even these will lapse and we will have to pick ourselves up and make the effort to regain the ground we have lost.

 

There is an element of futility, and even absurdity, in all of this, and one is occasionally struck by the thought that life consists of simply going through the same motions again and again.  

But I try to fight this inclination to demean our efforts.  There is nobility in work and activity, even if it is partly Sisyphean.  We commune with the rest of the world and with nature in our quest to make order from disorder.  There is no shame in repetition or even drudgery if it is done in good faith and with purpose.  Perhaps there is no higher calling.  And, of course, there are always new boulders to push to keep things interesting!