“If God had wanted us to eat vegetables out of cans, He would have given us can openers instead of hands!” – AI skeptics, had they been around when canning became popular.
In this post I will compare how progress improved our eating habits with how progress has improved our workplaces, and how AI will continue to do the same.
A big “Thank you!” goes out to everyone who thinks that AI is the beginning of the end of humanity. They inspired me to write this (blame/thank them too, I guess.) This is how I picture them:
The case for AI: The carrot analogy
In the days before canning, and way before refrigeration, people could only eat carrots and enjoy their many benefits if they were in season. And if you grew your own carrots, you would have to wait months for them to mature.
Canning enabled people to have nutritious carrots at home year-round. It was a great leap forward for nutrition. And freezing/refrigeration means that even better carrots, with all the benefits of freshly harvested ones, are available, quite literally, in the next room. Freezing also means salt is not required, another great leap forward for healthy living.
Do people insist upon fresh carrots and eat them only when they are in season? For most people, the answer is “Of course not!”. People don’t reject canned or frozen carrots because they object to new-fangled technology like refrigeration and canning! Well, sane people don’t forsake canned or frozen carrots, anyway.
We can all enjoy carrots year-round. We eat better, feel better, and live longer as a result. And guess what? Carrots are relatively cheap and still delicious, even when frozen or canned.
AI is doing for work what canning and freezing did for carrots.
In the right hands, AI tools such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Grammarly can produce content that is on par with virtually any writer. And just as having frozen carrots available lets us eat them in minutes instead of months, AI tools let us create content in minutes rather than hours or days.
I’m old enough to remember a world before word processors. Even saying “word processor” makes me feel old. Even saying “a world before Word” makes me feel old. It’s all about the bass, no treble. No, wait, I got off the beaten path there for a second. It is all about Google Docs these days. Before you know it, Google Docs will be legacy software, and we will have moved on to something newer and better. Maybe we already have. Like I say, I am a geezer/dinosaur.
My point is this: nobody called word processors the end of the world. In fact, everybody wanted one. I recall sharing my Word CD-ROM with colleagues so that their niece could use it and get better grades at school. And word processors were, and still are, AI. But they didn’t destroy the world; they made it a better place. We wrote better essays and communicated more effectively at work. We looked forward to the paperless office, too, even though we didn’t quite get it. Not yet, anyway.
I suppose printed dictionaries were an even earlier version of AI: they allowed us to gain information that we didn’t already know. Malcolm X educated himself by reading dictionaries while in jail. Would those who are opposed to AI deny the incarcerated the right to read?
So why the backlash against AI?
It is easy to understand why seemingly all politicians are adamantly opposed to AI – they are opposed to any sort of progress, bar none. They love their power and their archaic lifestyle and beliefs. They love their control, and without it, they die.
I hear and read lots of people who hate time-saving tools just because they are AI. They wear their hatred of progress like a badge of honour. There ought to be an -ism for it, because “technophobe” and “luddite” sound a bit clunky and outdated to me. My mom would likely call them “sticks in the mud”. Maybe I will ask AI for a synonym I like better. That’s what it is there for, right?
AI Interlude: AI defines people who are opposed to AI1:
ChatGPT:
Neo-Luddite, progress-averse, digital skeptics who suffer from Futuritis-averse syndrome.
They are Next-gen naysayers and Prog-blockers (sounds like a high-blood-pressure medication), invoking the Innovitis chronicus clause at every opportunity. Perhaps we should simply call them The Not-On-My-Watch Brigade.
Google Gemini:
As your AI partner, here are a few options for people who are adamantly opposed to AI, ranging from academic to snarky:
Rust-Colored Glasses: People who look back at the “good old days” with nostalgia, ignoring the rust/difficulties of that time.
Bio-Purists: People who insist that only biological intelligence counts.
Digital Refuseniks: Those who refuse to engage with the new standard.
The Stasis Quo: A play on “status quo”—people who want things to stay exactly as they are.
Algo-Skeptics: A slightly more formal term for those who distrust algorithms.
Here’s your takeaway: Carrots, not sticks!
- This section is the only part of this post written with the assistance of “AI”. Everything else is pure “George Perry Goodness”! ↩︎
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