A couple of things over the past few days have brilliantly illustrated why I’m not as worried about the AI apocalypse. I started having serious doubts while listening to John C. Dvorak on No Agenda before his demise; RIP, Buzzkill.
Last year, there were many breathless stories about how self-improving AI would soon improve things to the point that it’d be impossible to stop. JCD’s point was that the continuation pace of improvement was impossible because of entropy; things can’t improve forever.
But during the run-up to the holidays last year, I watched Christmas Vacation. Clark Griswold had completely covered his Chicagoland house with lights. He assembled the family, along with many of the house guests for the glorious lighting, plugged in the extension cords, and nothing happened.
It took me a while to find the particular clip, but that’s it.
The AI World-Ending kill shot won’t work because someone left the light switch in the garage in the “off” position.
After reading via audiobooks, (remember that Meghan O’Gieblyn’s excellent Will and Attention, I committed to try to use various AI tools to try to automate tedious tasks
Hey, Grok, can you add the Social Security Disability Insurance payment dates to my Google calendar?
I can do that if you give me your birthday.
*Enters birthday*
Grok contemplated for a few seconds, and added the SSDI payment dates to my Google Calendar. It did set the series to end in November. I manually adjusted the end date for something far in the future. I would probably need to check the exact age when the SSDI would go to regular SSI. (And the chances of me living that long aren’t great, so I didn’t bother checking.)
I’ve also been trying to use tools to add my rides to and from Georgetown for this study where I’m a subject. The provider emails attach somewhat-incomprehensible reservation PDFs. Neither the AI tools or I can often pick out information from the PDFs, but Apple iOS does allow me to import the information to my calendar from the SMS messages.
Okay, this is cool!
Can I have AI tools schedule my WMATA MetroAccess Paratransit rides for an event on Wednesday Night?
Nope. That didn’t work. Let’s see if Grok can do it.
May I have your client ID?
Doesn’t work; let me try to login manually.
My account is locked.
Dial the phone number, and they’re closed until Tuesday.
Damnit.
Let’s see if Muse can do it.
After about 25 minutes of work, it hit the same roadblock.
Shoot.
After fumbling with this on Sunday and Monday, I came to the conclusion that, yes, I was going to have to wait until a person was sitting in the office at L’Enfant Plaza on Tuesday.
That entire process took something like twenty minutes. Seems that my authorization had expired, and I didn’t notice it.
The rep I finally got through to was able to reactivate my account for something like 60 days, and put me through to the reservations operator to let me schedule my trip for Wednesday night.
The outbound trip was handled by one of the local taxi companies. They use a text-messaging system; I was able to add the trips to my Google calendar using an iOS device.
The old time-bound and process-bound hiccups are what make it nearly impossible for AI tools to accomplish the nightmares envisioned by the AI doomsayers.
The tools, however, do allow for quicker, perhaps more-effective use of the old tools. When I filled out the paratransit pass renewal, I didn’t need to print anything out. I sent a PNG of my Virginia DMV ID QR code, along with digital photos of my state ID.
This, of course, is worse for humanity than me sitting in the Department of Motor Vehicles facility.
The AI tools aren’t going to kill us all. They are going to help us fill out that weird form originally-created in 1996.
I’m skeptical, but I am okay with this.