I was running the other day, trying to ensure I hit my 500km target for 2024, and I got to thinking about AI, seeing some interesting parallels in relation to my experiences as I lumbered around one of my usual 5km routes.
The key issue that sparked my thinking was peoples reaction to me saying “good morning” as I made my way around my run. People seemed to be very surprised and uncomfortable with my polite announcement and this is despite some of the people I passed being people I passed on my run pretty regularly and therefore where my greeting should have been familiar. Now I have to acknowledge I am a 6ft 2in Scotsman, and in my running would likely appear to others as hot, breathless and sweaty, so this may play into their reaction in that they may be seeking to just stick their heads down and ignore me. But what if it is more than that?
It all got me wondering if we have become more insular as a society and as I thought about it plenty of supporting evidence came to mind. My parents knew every neighbour and my mother often got lost in Asda for hours speaking to various people she knew, much to my disdain as a child who did not enjoy being dragged around a supermarket. My visits however, which are fewer due to online shopping, are in and out of the supermarket with minimal fuss, and as to my neighbours, I know a few to talk to but don’t know many. Considering online shopping for example, this works due to its convenience and ease but in doing so reduces the opportunities for in-person social interaction and for the accidental introduction or chat which the in-person visit to a supermarket might facilitate. And that’s why some supermarkets have actually added in-person checkouts back, rather than self service checkout, to try and reintroduce the social side of the weekly or monthly shop. In fact looking around the common conversations of the past, with people stood in their gardens or outside their houses talking of the weather and their kids, these have now been replaced by argumentative conversations regarding inconvenient parking, dog fouling and children kicking their ball against the fence. Have we became so obsessed with “stranger danger” that we now don’t seek out or embrace new people as we once did? Is convenience king such that we want things easy even if it means losing out on opportunities to interact with our fellow human beings? And have we moved to a “me”, a world focussed on the individual and our rights, rather than the “we”, the world focused on collectiveness, community and our responsibilities?
So what does this have to do with AI?
Some are worried about the fact AI might see us becoming over reliant on it and that it might see us interacting with other people less often. These appear logical worries however as I indicated above, these things are already happening. We are already becoming focussed on convenience; on demand TV, next day delivery, food delivery services and more. We are also less likely to engage with others in person through not having to go out for shopping, etc and through the increased amount of time we spend on our screens and devices; I think at the moment I still average around 2.5hrs per day on my phone, and that excludes the time on my work device so where did those hours come from if we assume I am spending the same time sleeping as people did in the past? So maybe the issue isn’t going to be AI causing these problems, but AI accelerating them? But if we take as fact our want for convenience and our want for ease, where in person interactions maybe aren’t easy, isn’t it obvious that we would choose to make use of AI tools to make things easier, to help us with our interactions or to present us with someone, or thing, to interact with without all the complexities of a human to human interaction? You cant reset a human being however if your chat bot gets disagreeable you can simply reset it and start again.
Conclusion
I suspect AI like other technologies before it will simply magnify and accelerate issues which already exist in society. Convenience is great, but to have a meaningful existence and to flourish there needs to be a suitable level of challenge, some desirable difficulty. A focus on yourself is great and safe but it leads to missing out on the warmth and colour of human interactions, albeit they are often messy and complex, but they are a core part of what it means to be human.
Maybe we need to zoom out and forget about AI and take a long hard look at where we are going as a society and as a human race. I often talk about balance, and maybe that’s what we need most, to look at balance.
Or if sticking with looking at AI, maybe its to help us speed up some tasks to allow us to focus on other things which are more difficult, that provide the challenge rather than convenience, or which involve interacting with others, in which case the trade-off sounds beneficial.
I do hope these musing strike a cord as I don’t have any answers, only questions, and maybe that in itself is important, in finding the time to explore the bigger questions.
Technology and Learning