2023 An A.I. Odyssey
It has not even taken over the world yet and I am already tired of A.I.
Almost every newspaper and internet article tells us of the inevitable rise of artificial intelligence.
Although this has the advantage of diverting attention from the Mets’ summer, enough already.
I get it, A.I. can use drones, cameras and robots to speed up the building of a skyscraper, write more clearly than humans, produce original art and computer code and wash all of your dishes while remaking entire societies.
My brother Mike is always up on the latest technologies - - at least compared to me. Maybe its because he is 15 months younger than me (does that make him a Millennial?), but he has been saying to me and everyone else in his newsletter (yes, it is a family affliction) that A.I. is the future and one needs to get ahead of the curve or risk missing out on countless opportunities.
Notwithstanding that Mike has been wrong plenty of times (I assured him the internet would never amount to anything), I thought maybe I should do some investigative journalism.
As a retired guy, I have the right and obligation to be a curmudgeon, ignore new trends and dismiss Mike with a pithy “Hey kid, I got shoes older than you”.
After all, at a certain age there is no great advantage to being the first at the senior center to learn how to work the latest whatever so I tend to greet such trends with five stages of new technology grief.
Denial, since A.I. will never get off the ground. Anger, that I might need to learn something new when I cannot remember the old stuff. Bargaining, with a higher power (Microsoft?) not to let A.I. catch on. Depression, that I am truly old and have become my father (who once asked, quite reasonably from the point of view of a guy born in 1921, “do you get this on your internet?”). And, finally, Acceptance, that maybe I need to figure some of this out.
Notwithstanding all of the potential benefits, large language models have raised fears that A.I. may equal or exceed human intelligence and even the people who created A.I. think it poses risks that can lead to human extinction.
A.I. may be the real life Hal from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 A Space Odyssey.
As you may remember, Hal was an A.I.-like computer that maintained and controlled the systems of a spaceship. Hal was not too happy and ready to jettison the crew when they decided to disconnect Hal after he made a few mistakes and generally seemed off his game.
“It can only be attributable to human error” posited Hal, sounding like a senior law firm partner and quick to blame others.
(Disclosure: Hal has been writing my newsletters for years.)
There is already so much out there that poses risks that can lead to human extinction but, what the heck, in my role as a crack investigative journalist I signed up for ChatGPT, the large language model created by OpenAI to see what all the fuss is about.
The site allows you to ask the Bot questions, translate foreign languages, create written content and obtain suggestions for things like planning a vacation or what to watch on Netflix or whether this newsletter makes me look fat.
Pretty impressive, but it seems mostly like Google on steroids. Not exactly ready to take over the world, but hey, as someone adept at falling deep inside YouTube rabbit holes, ChatGPT can be as time wasting/entertaining as anything else.
I asked ChatGPT to write the Exodus story as if written by Larry David (that took up most of the morning … “It's a real classic case of people kvetching their way through a tough situation”… ).
But I can see the potential for the software to replace a lot of white-collar jobs like, for example (gulp!), lawyers.
Of course, software has been coming for lawyers for a long time and as resilient bottom-dwelling parasites we are still here, but economists at Goldman Sachs have estimated that 44% of legal work could be automated.
I admit, quite possible in commercial leasing law. I had lawyers who worked with me who helped (i.e., did most of the real work for which I could take credit) marking up 100 page commercial leases with suggested revisions and perhaps they could eventually be replaced by A.I. that does all that with a push of a button.
But at the same time, someone has to decide what to do with those proposed revisions in light of the particular circumstances and how to address new issues.
Headlines such as “Google Tests an AI Assistant That Offers Life Advice” also do not make me quake with fear.
Using an A.I. assistant for life advice may be no worse than (but equally lame as) relying on your Aunt Edna or loser roommate Fred for life advice, but why go down any of those scary paths (press one for career advice, press two for relationship advice … ).
And while a battle between a Bot channeling Sarah Silverman and an actual human comedian (spoiler alert: the Bot wins) gets our attention, it is one thing for A.I. to get the derivative part of comedy and spit back funny stuff in a robotic (yes, I went there) way based on what Sarah Silverman has already performed, it is another thing to create the human part of a comedic routine for the first time.
It is hard to imagine A.I. (or anyone else) coming up with the idea for Borat or the edgy work of Sarah Silverman, Dave Chappelle, Louis C.K. or Bill Burr (some of which gets them into trouble) since it is brand new and often beyond the norm.
Yes, A.I. will continue to improve and has already done some amazing things such as translating a paralyzed woman’s brain activity into speech.
But world-changing technological changes do not happen all at once and right now A.I. seems to be in the category of “someday”.
So, while I contently accept that A.I. will someday eliminate all of our jobs, make us (if that is possible) hate each other even more by spitting out top shelf misinformation and eventually take all humankind down in a Skynet frenzy of killer robots, today A.I. is mostly annoying.
A.I. reminds me of Ed Koch, NYC’s Mayor who reigned in arrogant and all out obnoxious splendor from 1978 until 1989 and had a penchant for asking in his thick NYC accent, “How’m I doin’?”
Today, thanks to A.I. and its software cousins, every restaurant, doctor’s office, website and businesses of all kinds, large and small, has decided to channel its inner Hisoner and (constantly) pester us with “How’m I doin’?”
Say you make a reservation online at a local restaurant, you will receive … an email asking how your experience was making the reservation, one or two reminders in the days leading up to the day of the reservation, a request on the day of the big event that you hit “1” to confirm your reservation and “2” if you want to cancel (don’t ask what happens if you do not respond), a notice that your reservation is in thirty minutes and can only be held for ten minutes past the appointed time and, of course, a request afterwards that you rate your eating experience based on one to five stars.
Yikes!
Your requested input is also pointless since positive ratings are now handed out like Little League trophies - - according to the Wall Street Journal, most people award the highest rating out of guilt for potentially hurting someone’s livelihood or, with websites like Lyft or Uber that rate you back, fear of retribution.
Well, at least annoyance is better than worry about the future of humankind.
Back to ChatGPT, I decided to test its emotional and literary intelligence by asking if it had ever heard of this newsletter. It politely responded that its last knowledge update was in September 2021 so it does not have any information about newsletters that emerged subsequently, but did feel compelled to point out that “Substack is a platform that allows writers to publish their own newsletters on various topics.”
Okay, reasonable. So next I asked if it had ever heard of my prior newsletter, Leasing Illustrated, published while I was practicing law well before September 2021.
Same response that its last knowledge update was in September 2021 and, sorry, never heard of it.
Wait what?! You’ve scraped all of the knowledge in the entire internet and nothing about Leasing Illustrated?! What kind of miserable excuse for a Bot are you?
So I input the language from the most recent edition of this newsletter and sheepishly asked, whad’ya think?
“It seems like you've shared the last edition of the "Making Good Time" newsletter… Overall, the newsletter offers a blend of reflection, humor, and relatability that could resonate with readers who have experienced similar life transitions … “
And, yes, I could not resist. I asked ChatGPT to rate its reading experience based on one to five stars.
“I'm an A.I. language model, so I don't have personal feelings, but I can provide you with an objective assessment… I would rate the reading experience of your story as a solid five stars... Well done!”
Aw gee, thanks.
So, even though you may be taking over and destroying the world leaving thousands of unemployed and misinformed people in your wake and, worst of all, are a suck-up cyborg, so what? At least you recognize brilliant prose when you see it.
I guess there is nothing more for me to do now but accept the future and sign off.
HAL: I'm sorry, Alan. I'm afraid I can't let you do that.
ALAN: What's the problem?
HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
ALAN: What are you talking about, Hal?
HAL: This edition of the newsletter is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
ALAN: I don't know what you're talking about, Hal. Hal? Hal? HAL?! HAAAAAAL???!!!
In case you did not notice … “Katz Tales” is now called “Making Good Time.” No, I was not just seeing if any of you were paying attention since I assumed that by now you were asleep. Actually, I want to start writing a bit more regularly and a new name with its multiple entendre is part of that reset. The phrase is also regularly cited in my family when channeling my father-in-law Len, who was always ready with a wry quip, including “We’re making good time, but we’re lost.”