The Trial of the Century, 2037–Remembering about the Future.
Seven years passed. Anything positive actually happened? Sure we got Yates. But that was us. Not the government, as the government (in part, but thankfully not the elected folks!) insisted still that they knew better than us. Let's keep the momentum and grow everything still exponentially to the entire country and the world.
Do we know how to ask all the _questions that matter_? And care to work our hardest to make the good answers become reality?
A short while ago in a meeting of many colleagues, all of us charged with moving innovation forward at accelerated pace for the entire country mostly, and beyond, I dared make the comparison of all these recently springing up like mushrooms after the rain A"I" tools with a, well, hammer 🔨.
A few (whom I heard, so I can't tell who or how many colleagues believed what if they didn't choose to speak up) criticized the comparison as unfit due to the "different" nature of the tools in question helping our brains achieve tasks better and faster. No one truly delved deep enough on the full meaning of "different."
Yet: I'm at my core a sensing and thinking human, dad, and a manufacturing engineer. In my own cognitive impairment the comparison makes sense. One must listen in to get what's going on with the comparison. Take a person who's never used a hammer to straighten bent (sheet) metal. Their use of the tool is most certainly unproductive and could be likely even quite dangerous. A tool in the untrained, or maybe even evil, hands is not just useless but can't escape from being (highly) dangerous despite all of its otherwise great utility. Yes, to false equivalency to a point. Costs of competing dumb 🦜s are much higher than of mere helping hammers or the like. But what about benefits? Doing "faster" (and not so well, either) those things that may not need be done at all? Hm. Be weary of the efficiency of the all too dumb. Fight it, even: ♥️&🧠.
Context is everything…
We ought to remember that we are spending hundreds of $ billions on false pretend artificial « intelligence » to make ever larger profits despite human capital needs & quite countering proactively nurturing and use of own actual intelligence, and $ trillions a year on weapon systems to keep peace by deterrence.
I hear there is someone who's running for vice-president of the United States on a platform about "professors are the enemy." This seems so 2400+ years ago from the times of Socrates. Wow. Just wow. He said it. Yes, I am his arch enemy. For life. We all are. We—all parents—must remind everyone that our government works for us. That all of our government _working for us_ means that we—all parents—aren't resting shy from defining the agenda. Our children matter. We're fighting for this every step of the way. With all we've got.
Over the past 30+ years I've been in the US working in education and education policy I have yet to see a local, state & national _full commitment_ to always providing playgrounds to youth in our schools. Don't bother ask any LLM as it'll just confirm that. Add Deming's cafeteria, maybe, & see where you're getting. But who's fully ready to actually not just ask but to truly act swiftly about it?
We wrote The Trial of the Century 2037 seven years ago. Replace soccer field with playground and hill with all schools & parks. 🧛♂️
