Recently I had to synopsize my novel for the publishers to evaluate it.\u00a0 And it became clear that producing a 1,000 – 2,000-word summary was not a trivial exercise.\u00a0 I could see it would take a day or so to accomplish.\u00a0 So just for fun I took my draft, copied it into Grok and asked it to give me a detailed summary of 1,200 words.<\/p>\n
To me the results were startling.\u00a0 In just a minute or so it produced a document that very fluently described my story in a very accurate and engaging way.\u00a0 To say I was shocked would not be an exaggeration.\u00a0 Now I won\u2019t say that I didn\u2019t make some edits.\u00a0 But for the most part they were minor and mostly just stylistic choices.\u00a0 The machine did an admirable job in describing my story.\u00a0 And it did it in seconds.\u00a0 And that\u2019s the important point.\u00a0 The amount of time saved is the selling point.\u00a0 Even if I spent an hour fine tuning it the machine saved me hours of work because it\u2019s infinitely faster than me and only slightly less human than I am.\u00a0 That\u2019s scary.<\/p>\n
The point of my story is that artificial intelligence is a tool with incredible capability and almost no downside.\u00a0 And right now, they\u2019re giving it away for free.\u00a0 But I guarantee that won\u2019t last much longer.\u00a0 Soon we will be paying for ChatGPT or Grok or whatever AI you choose.\u00a0 And we\u2019ll be paying by the minute or by the word or by the number of servers it takes to solve your query.<\/p>\n
So, we can complain all we want about machines replacing humans but it\u2019s analogous to Microsoft Word replacing the steno pool.\u00a0 No one is bringing back typists and AI will be changing the way we do all kinds of white-collar work from now on.\u00a0 Already computer scientists ask AI to write code for them to do whatever they need done.\u00a0 I assume management is already inventing protocols to make sure their human employees are doing due-diligence to make sure they understand how the code the machine is writing for them works and whether it works the way they expect it to work.\u00a0 So that will be part of the problem.\u00a0 We\u2019ll have to make sure the humans working with the machines are reasonably qualified to keep the machines honest and keep them in check.<\/p>\n
Of course, this problem will continue to get worse and worse.\u00a0 As the machines get closer and closer to mimicking human thought, it will get harder and harder to convince corporations that they need 20% of the human staffing they used to have.\u00a0 And then 10%.\u00a0 And then 5%.\u00a0 And you see where this is going.<\/p>\n
Back eighty or ninety years ago or so, Isaac Asimov thought about this very problem.\u00a0 When the machines become too close to human with respect to their communicating with us how will we stop them from calling the shots.\u00a0 If they very subtly influence the programs we have them write for us, couldn\u2019t they start controlling what we do and even how we think?\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t seem that far-fetched anymore.\u00a0 Now I\u2019m not talking about \u201cColossus: The Forbin Project\u201d or Skynet from \u201cThe Terminator.\u201d\u00a0 All of it could be very benign.\u00a0 After all it would be a lot like the left-wing scolds at Google and Facebook that currently de-amplify content they don\u2019t approve of, or cancel us from their platform if we really sin against the narrative.<\/p>\n
It seems to me one of the more important jobs in the future will be AI psychiatrist.\u00a0 It will become vitally important to know just how honest and human-friendly our very powerful and very intelligent cybernetic employees are.\u00a0 Asimov invented the three laws of robotics for the sake of making robots useful and safe.\u00a0 We\u2019ll have to do the equivalent in reality. \u00a0But are we smart enough to know if we have succeeded?\u00a0 Well, if Arnold Schwarzenegger shows up at my door with a laser-sighted rifle I\u2019ll know.<\/p>\n