Doing Your Thinking for You

So, are you worried that the ongoing Hollywood writers and actors strike will affect your favorite TV programs in the fall?

Yeah, me neither.

Most of the new shows out there are agenda-driven tripe anyway. And it’s hard to feel empathy for the Hollywood crowd. I know the great majority of them are just aspiring folk struggling to make a living, but my admittedly stereotypical vision of them pictures a hedonistic culture full of excess, addiction and immorality.

There is one facet of the strike that does grab my attention. A key item among the demands is for limits and controls on the use of artificial intelligence, commonly known as AI. It’s been riveting to me to learn of how far the technology has come. I read, for example, that AI was used to make Harrison Ford look younger in the most recent Indiana Jones movie. In fact, the innovation is now capable of cloning an entire performer and assimilating his voice. Actors are legitimately concerned that they can, and ultimately will be replaced.

AI is equally a threat to the writers. Apparently, if you were to take all the existing scripts for a popular show, say Law and Order for instance, and feed them into the system, AI can learn how the show is written, and can create new scripts for new episodes without human help. The writers want assurances that TV producers will never let this happen.

I confess I am a bit puzzled about the union strategy. Seems to me the best way to make sure computers don’t take your job is to stay on the job and continue to do it well. Wouldn’t going on strike force your employer to use the very technology you are trying to squelch? Guess I don’t understand show biz.

Anyway, it’s their problem, right? AI is not a threat to you and me…..he wrote nervously.

In truth, most of us have little awareness of how much it already affects (controls?) our lives. Those ladies with the sultry voices inside our smart phones, Siri and Alexa, set alarms, look up information, and send text messages for us. Maybe you’re scrolling through your Facebook wall and come upon an ad for a Doobie Brothers concert coming to Oak Mountain Amphitheater. You click on it just out of curiosity to see what the tickets might cost. Then, as you resume scrolling, your newsfeed suddenly is cluttered with ads for concerts of all types. Somebody, or more accurately some thing, has tracked your activity.

You turn on your TV and the screen immediately suggests the shows it thinks you want to watch. It also customizes the commercials you will see. Automated customer service machines help you solve your tech problems without speaking to a human. Your smart phone activates by recognizing your face. You can watch live video of someone at your front door, even if you are a thousand miles from home. You can put it in control of your thermostat and refrigerator. You can use it to start your car when you are not in it. Soon it will drive the car.

All of this is super great, so long as we continue to be the ones deciding how to use it. But what if, one day, we get into our self-driving car and tell it to take us to the farmers market. It knows what sort of items you usually buy there, and has calculated you can get them cheaper at the grocery store, so it decides to take you there instead. “But I don’t want to go to the grocery store!” you shout to it. “I want to go to the farmers market!” No matter. The vehicle has already decided what is best for you, and off to Publix you go.

You turn on your TV and, on a whim, decide to watch the latest episode of The Bachelor, a show you haven’t watched in years. But your TV decides this is not a program that you have been interested in, and redirects you to a rerun of Andy Griffith. You scream at your television and hurl the remote across the living room, but Andy and Barney remain on the screen.

Sound like the stuff of a corny, old sci-fi movie? Maybe, but the technology already exists to do both of those things, and more. It also occurs to me that I could feed several of my past blogs into an AI computer, and the machine could start writing my columns without me. This won’t be hard for you to discern.

If my blogs suddenly become much more clever, insightful and smart, you’ll know I didn’t write them.