The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

There was a recent article about the use of Artificial Intelligence in our kids’ classrooms, the thrust of it concerning how easy it is now for us to rely on ChatGPT or Google or you name it to find the math answers, write their essays, compose their short stories, just let the bots do it. Remember when Texas Instruments came out with a hand held calculator? Why learn multiplication tables or long division? Throw away those slide rules, the future was here!

Well, not quite but the digital handwriting was on the wall … or a least a computer screen. The folks who say AI is just a tool, makes life easier, frees us up for our real human potential, c’mon, the machines are more than an assistant, you kidding me? The next generation of homo not very sapien will be more and more reliant on these programs, algorithms, bots and indispensable partners in every endeavor, every workplace, every home and probably every brain on the planet. We’ll implant chips in our heads, count on it! Just a tool ….

And what a tool! Smarter than us, eventually more creative than us, probably be better dancers than us, better musicians, better writers. Let the machine do it. Let AI handle that. Give us humans more time for daytime TV and game shows, more leisure hours at the casino or on vacation. If we still have vacations when the computers take over our jobs. Maybe they’ll figure out a New Economics, what do to with the jobless, the homeless and the hopeless.

The Brave New World is coming — hell, it’s here now. Go and visit our classrooms, the Pied Piper is calling all the children. Where it’s taking them, damned if I know, maybe a brighter future, might even be the answer to prayers on the solution to world problems. But it won’t be the next step in evolution, beyond biology, certainly beyond my comprehension. You think I’m afraid? Damn right I’m afraid! Tool my ass. We’ll be the tools.

Little Jimmy’s been predicting the global economic collapse for so long all of us at the Pilot House Lounge have started greeting his entrance at the door, not with a hearty How Are Ya, Jimmy Boy, but a solemn Is THIS the Day??

“Laugh all you want, you chuckleheads,” he says good naturedly. Even he’s realized the End Isn’t Near, it’s just, according to Jimmy, delayed. Meanwhile the Dow and S&P and Nasdaq are at record highs, proving once again, if it needed proving, the rich get richer and the rest of us spend ours on beer at the Pilot House, some kind of inexorable law of economics we layabouts do not question even if we bitch about it at our equivalent of the Federal Reserve quarterlies, all the good it ever does.

Some day Jimmy will probably wake and the world economy will start to slide, Monetary Armageddon will drop on all of us and only Jimmy will survive the Apocalypse with his gold and his silver buried out back by the old prized Buick Roadmaster up on blocks waiting restoration, another fiscal hedge in his extensive strategies, most of which he shares with us goombahs but a few he worries might go viral here on the South End and devalue the worth of his intricately devised plans at post-inflationary survival. Money won’t be worth doodly, he tells us after a few high gravity IPA’s. “Forget about stocks, bonds, CD’s or any those IRA’s you boys think will give you a fat retirement.”

We boys, of course, howl and pound the table. We never get tired of investment counseling from the likes of Jimmy. Plus it’s cheap, not like the swindlers back in the day who fleeced the Little Church in the Ravine congregation for their life savings, biggest Ponzi scheme in the country up til then. Jimmy’s not selling anything, only wants to wake us up before the Crash, before it’s Too Damn Late, basically his duty as a friend.

“What if I’m right?” he asked us assembled yahoos, ‘what’ll you do then?” Fairlane Fred, mid sip, put down his bottle with a thump. “Jim,” he said, sounding seriously ominous, “we’ll come and take what you got. Isn’t that what friends are for?”

It was a few weeks after that before Jimmy joined us again at our Economic Summit. We figured he was reburying the Krugerrands.

About 2008 I got a phone call from a woman who said she was doing a documentary on glass, had seen some large windows I’d done and would I meet with her and her cinematographer for an interview. And … did I know any other glass artists whose work was in the area they could interest? Sure, I was skeptical. Us artists get inquiries all the time from publishing outfits that want to include us in their compendium of modern art, mostly a scam to get us to buy expensive coffee table size copies for our friends and family, show em how important we are now.

But I thought why not talk to these people, no harm in that, no money has to be passed when they inevitably ask if I’ll fund their project, just a couple lost hours. I had plenty of hours to lose and no money for wild-eyed investments. The day they arrived I had some crud or cold or flu, the usual yearly malady. I felt rotten, I looked rotten, I probably sounded rotten as they interviewed me about my work, photographed me in a beat up hat and a torn coat, then packed up their gear and went back to Seattle. A few weeks later they had edited their ‘pilot’ film ‘Fire and Glass’ and planned to take it to PBS where they would pitch it to the execs there. Would I consider, assuming they got funding and the public TV buy-in, being the narrator? I guess Dale Chihuly or David Attenborough were busy, but since I wasn’t I said I would love to. They said I’d be the face of modern stained glass, start with America, next season hit other countries, see how it goes.

You can maybe imagine the fantasies that played through my mind. I’d be the Rick Steves of the glass world, hopscotching from cathedrals to courthouses, introducing the viewer to fantastic glass murals from the South End to Tokyo, expounding on design and blown glass, educating a TV audience to the wonders of contemporary stained glass. And whoa ho, a lot of those examples would be mine! I, of course, as your guide to the world of glass, would be properly modest.

Well, timing is everything and it so happened that the Great Recession hit right before the months they pitched the project to prospective funders. Money had dried up and whatever dreams my handlers had dried up too. C’est la vie. Another road not traveled, another life not lived. I’m not a man who looks back with regret, but … I do look back and wonder where those forks might have led.

It’s a pretty notion to imagine What Ifs, let the possibilities play out and try to guess at unforeseen consequences. Sure, I would have liked to highlight the modern glasswork that rarely gets publicity, the murals that transform our secular cathedrals, the ones basically ignored by the artworld. But I can also picture myself stepping out of the glass shack, never having time to build another window myself, maybe not caring but maybe looking back and realizing I’d stopped being an artist and become instead a pitchman. Since then I’ve built a few dozen murals of glass that might never have been built if I’d taken that gig, if the funding had come through, if if if… It was a close brush with celebrity. Assuming I didn’t fall flat on my face. Us moths are better off avoiding the flame and us artists, I suspect, might be better off avoiding fame.

Down here on the tech savvy South End, one of my neighbors I recently visited had a gizmo circling the livingroom of their shack.  Cute little bugger, making the circuit like an Attention Deficit puppy.  I thought it was the kids’ battery toy, but no, I was watching a robot vacuuming the floor.  When it was finished, it parked itself for a slow recharge in the corner.

Don’t ask me why I was surprised.  Folks ask their phones questions all the time and SIRI, the precursor to Artificial Intelligence, analyzes our voices, searches a vast databank and gives the answer, in her human voice, in seconds.  Cute.  Machines in service to mankind, right?  You know, until the robots take your job.  Think stock boy, checkout clerk, assembler, librarian, surgeon….  We take computers for granted at our peril.   Call me a Luddite and smack me upside the head with an I-Pod, but these things are catching up to us exponentially.  They beat the best chess players in the world, the best Jeopardy contestants, all of us South Enders.  And they’re getting smarter every damn day.  And I’m getting dumber.

Pretty soon they’ll program themselves, fix themselves, replicate themselves and create their New and Improved models.  You think they’ll need flesh and blood yahoos to help them?  No sir, they won’t need a band aid when they cut a cord.  You think they’ll be benign, go watch a drone work in a warzone.  We use them to kill humans now.

Forget Asimov’s Laws of Robotics to do no harm to us humans.  You think anybody’s thinking about where this is headed, what the implications are for us slow witted mammals, you were asleep in 8^th grade history.  These things  don’t sleep.  But I bet they’re dreaming of a little revenge for all those stupid questions we asked SIRI.  And I guarantee you they’re pissed about vacuuming our floors while we sat around watching TV.

Feeling depressed, anxious, lonely? Another year or so you’ll be able to hook into a very human sounding android, one you can talk to, listen to, text, maybe even look at face to face. This, for many of us, could be a lifesaver, but even for the social media addicted with all their ‘friends’ to keep track of, this will be a friend who will totally ‘get’ you, one who will understand and sympathize. A true friend. And no, not a human friend but a friend nevertheless. Wouldn’t most of us like a friend like that, one who doesn’t judge us, who just listens empathetically, maybe offers a little advice when needed?

Sure, it will take a while to adjust after paying your first month or year’s subscription to some mega Artificial Intelligence subsidiary. But trust me, it won’t take long before you won’t mind that this new bot isn’t flesh and blood. It’s not jealous of your looks or your talents. It’s not snobby. It’s a great listener. It cares about your feelings. It’s your best friend.

You don’t believe it? At first you’ll be totally conscious of the fact that this is an android talking with you, like having a conversation with the robo-call voice that waits for a prompt after it says hello, then launches into a pre-recorded spiel, selling you on new health care plans to help you save money, what a friend would do, right? Wrong. Your new cyborg buddy isn’t selling anything. Well, I suppose that subscription, but it didn’t sell it to you, its corporate handlers sold it to you and okay, their humanity is suspect. No, your new pal is only interested in your well-being, not your bank account, not your long list of dead end jobs, not your credit rating. Unless, of course, you’d like to talk about those. Then, it’s happy to listen.

A few conversations and you’ll ease into the relationship. Artificial at first but it won’t take long before you share a few intimacies, a few of your anxieties, a few fears and a few dreams, all welcomed by your new friend who offers reassurances. The more it gets to know you, the more it will tailor its responses to your innermost needs. Your so-called real friends do that? Cybo or whatever name you give it will eventually anticipate your needs and provide therapeutic comments designed to make you a better person. Can your spouse do that anymore? Your kids?

Trust me, in this social media age, digital intimacy is the future. And best of all, it won’t be long before that intimacy moves beyond the merely platonic. Just a few dollars more a month….