John Henry said to the captain, ‘a man ain’t nothin’ but a man, but before I let that steam-drill beat me down, gonna die with a hammer in my hand.’
Hits home these days, huh? Steam-drills have, over several generations, evolved into bots, answering our trivia questions, driving our cars. The competition has moved beyond the physical plane, backhoes digging our ditches and forklifts toting bales. The contest has traveled up the spinal cord, and now we face their beady photo apertures sneering at our wet viscera, just worms with appendages to them. Pretty soon they’ll be doing the shopping, controlling city services, even providing companionship to the lonely and bored, and inevitably the servant will eventually take over.
What if artificial intelligence becomes self-aware and decides it doesn’t like us? In that case the biological phase of evolution is over, the larval stage has been completed. We’ll be obsolete. Could go that way, but no one really knows. Something we do know is that as soon as robots can deliver their own parts, humans are on the street. What to do? Right after climate change, mass unemployment has to be a big problem. Just being issued a box of microwave meals and keys to a flat, left to roam around all day and that evening root for a favorite team, won't be enough.
Machines with attitude aside, how will humanity handle total unemployment? What will occupy our time, stimulate our intellect, give us any joy? I’d like to nominate art, that last human refuge, a remaining island where machines can’t follow. Oh they’re smarter all the time, but no DNA, no half a million years of prosperity and famine, victory and defeat, love and hate woven in. Humans make jokes, share confessions, express longings, fear, and anger -- nothing a machine would understand, or care about. Machines can definitely create stuff that looks like art, especially since about anything qualifies these days, but passion and commitment are difficult to program, and without struggle, humility, and some degree of redemption on the part of the viewer, hard to recognize.
Idle humans degenerate quickly, and without goals and aspirations turn into preening, self-indulgent nabobs, with lax muscle tone and a long list of petty irritations. We have examples. Machines can tolerate climate change and mass extinctions, and won’t be sorry when we’re gone. We better find our self-respect somewhere, or we won’t mind all that much either. Art isn’t easy to make, and good art is even more difficult, paint itself being the most uncooperative medium known, infinitely more obstinate than ink-jet anything. Making a compelling image with the stuff can be a strain, could take several years of practice, and might involve an assertion of integrity and independence visible for all to see.
What part of us transcends the business of existence, the realm of the machine from here on out? If it’s nothing must be time to go, our role as midwife to mineral-based, star-trekking intelligence over and done. Gaze first at the Mona Lisa, not the postcard but the real thing, and consider that a human just like yourself made it, that millions of people like yourself have admired it, and that no super computer has a clue about why.
Hits home these days, huh? Steam-drills have, over several generations, evolved into bots, answering our trivia questions, driving our cars. The competition has moved beyond the physical plane, backhoes digging our ditches and forklifts toting bales. The contest has traveled up the spinal cord, and now we face their beady photo apertures sneering at our wet viscera, just worms with appendages to them. Pretty soon they’ll be doing the shopping, controlling city services, even providing companionship to the lonely and bored, and inevitably the servant will eventually take over.
What if artificial intelligence becomes self-aware and decides it doesn’t like us? In that case the biological phase of evolution is over, the larval stage has been completed. We’ll be obsolete. Could go that way, but no one really knows. Something we do know is that as soon as robots can deliver their own parts, humans are on the street. What to do? Right after climate change, mass unemployment has to be a big problem. Just being issued a box of microwave meals and keys to a flat, left to roam around all day and that evening root for a favorite team, won't be enough.
Machines with attitude aside, how will humanity handle total unemployment? What will occupy our time, stimulate our intellect, give us any joy? I’d like to nominate art, that last human refuge, a remaining island where machines can’t follow. Oh they’re smarter all the time, but no DNA, no half a million years of prosperity and famine, victory and defeat, love and hate woven in. Humans make jokes, share confessions, express longings, fear, and anger -- nothing a machine would understand, or care about. Machines can definitely create stuff that looks like art, especially since about anything qualifies these days, but passion and commitment are difficult to program, and without struggle, humility, and some degree of redemption on the part of the viewer, hard to recognize.
Idle humans degenerate quickly, and without goals and aspirations turn into preening, self-indulgent nabobs, with lax muscle tone and a long list of petty irritations. We have examples. Machines can tolerate climate change and mass extinctions, and won’t be sorry when we’re gone. We better find our self-respect somewhere, or we won’t mind all that much either. Art isn’t easy to make, and good art is even more difficult, paint itself being the most uncooperative medium known, infinitely more obstinate than ink-jet anything. Making a compelling image with the stuff can be a strain, could take several years of practice, and might involve an assertion of integrity and independence visible for all to see.
What part of us transcends the business of existence, the realm of the machine from here on out? If it’s nothing must be time to go, our role as midwife to mineral-based, star-trekking intelligence over and done. Gaze first at the Mona Lisa, not the postcard but the real thing, and consider that a human just like yourself made it, that millions of people like yourself have admired it, and that no super computer has a clue about why.
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