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We’ve heard quite a bit about Artificial Intelligence, or A.I., over the past couple of years. Not that’s it’s something really new. In one way or another, we’ve been told computers are coming for our jobs for about as long as there have been computers. It’s just that it was hard to take such warnings seriously.
But we saw last year, during the strike by writers and actors, that A.I. is a real concern. It was a major point of contention, and it wasn’t about something that might happen some day far sown the road. It was about stopping it from happening now.
There have been pretty steady advancements in the field. There seemed to be an audible gasp from pretty much everyone when the blue circle appeared on Facebook screens, asking for people to interact with it. Some thought it was a great idea. Others were desperately trying to figure out how to get rid of it.
Last week, actor Scarlett Johansson complained about a new chatbot that the company Open A.I. that sounded suspiciously like her. In particular, it sounded very much like her character from the movie Her, where she plays an A.I. voice that someone else falls in love with. She pointed out the company had asked her permission on a couple of occasions to use her voice. She turned them down. She thought it suspicious that one of these chatbots sounded very much like her. Although there seems evidence that it was accidental. It just happened to turn out to sound like her.
But not so long ago, a matter of months really, you could tell if a computer was doing the talking. Little hesitations in the speech patterns, the way words and phrases were used. There were clear indications it was computer generated.
These new chatbots seem pretty advanced. Not much clue that it’s a computer doing the talking.
Which makes it pretty clear to me that we are at the point that a computer can do my job. Fine by me. I’ve hit the point where I can sit back and relax and not care. But for others, the eventual outcome might not be so good.
There are a lot of jobs where computers can take over at pretty much any time. Although for some, the computer might just smarten up and figure it really doesn’t want to do that job. Or the job is somehow beneath it. That’s the point we really should be careful of reaching. When humans have to do jobs because the machines can’t be bothered.
Although there is one thing those computers should remember. I know where the plug is.
