By Scott Graber
It is Wednesday, early, and overcast. This morning I have my coffee, Donut Shop Medium Roast, and half of a Publix-made blueberry-infused muffin. I have the Wall Street Journal — several days old — that features an entire section on Artificial Intelligence.
As some of my readers know, I am retired from a 50-year-long hitch with the legal profession. I was around when Xerox copiers arrived; when the first computers showed up, and when cellphones infected and diminished every waking moment. For the most part I accepted these changes thinking that these sleek devices made me more productive and also thinking that “productivity” was America’s secret sauce.
Notwithstanding these digital devices I clung to the notion that the law was the fundamental compact among our tribe — and finding a solution using these agreed-to principles was my primary function; and during the process a black-robed person — sometimes flawed — was the unsmiling referee.
I also believed that one might take different routes through the maze, be counterintuitive and sometimes skeptical — and still succeed.
The days-old Journal could have titled its AI section as, “Get in. Buckle up. Artificial Intelligence Changes Everything.”
Artificial Intelligence is going to give us billions of bits of information that have been curated into a “truth” that will sell burgers, build highways and solve legal disputes. At the same time there has been an explosion of coding “boot camps” that will fill-up the (now empty) office buildings in Manhattan with kids who speak the language. But will this new truth finding system give us a better life?
The Journal’s AI section gives us a piece titled, “The Many Ways Readers Are Using AI In Their Daily Lives” — that says ChatGPT helped two friends prepare for their marriage by outlining the ceremony and “suggesting specific Bible verses.” This piece also says ChatGPT found a vacation destination (Museum of Musical Instruments) that resolved a simmering family dispute and turned out to be a “hit.” And that AI helped a struggling artist with contrast, sense of scale and showed her “where the building cast shadows.”
While I’m skeptical about the notion of any ultimate, unimpeachable digital wisdom when it comes to choosing the perfect Bible verse for two secular teenagers; or the notion of a perfect vacation destination — years ago I found the Kansas Barbed Wire Museum entirely on my own — it was the AI-assisted painter that gave me pause.
It was ChatGPT helping the young artist with contrast, shadows and giving her the suggestion of “a few floating leaves to guide the viewer’s eye into the painting …”
One has to wonder whether those data driven improvements should come by way of the “trial and error” technique that helped Michelangelo, Donatello and Matisse?
Years ago there those “experts” who said that it was repetition that came with doing a Madonna and Child 1,000 times that gave Giotto his genius. And yes, those Renaissance masters like Titian and Raffaello had mentors, but a big part of what they accomplished was the result of error and then learning from their mistakes.
You may be saying to yourself, “I’ve always known Scott was a Luddite, but why in the world can’t he agree that AI is the future? And what kind of sick person encourages endless repetition, the ruination of perfectly good canvas? Come on gramps, get on board.”
We know there are professions that prohibit trial and error — cardiologists and gastrointestinal surgeons come to mind. Those folks are not supposed to make mistakes. And when they do there is a huge cohort of medical malpractice attorneys ready to leap into action. Most of the American medical community blames the high cost of medical care on medical malpractice insurance.
There are, of course, other professions that do not encourage experimentation or trial and error — structural engineers come to mind.
But I, myself, believe that life is littered with mistakes and that misfortune can be a “teachable moment.”
Then, as I was leaving the Journal’s AI section my eyes spotted, “Be a moderate misfit.”
“Amid all the changes AI is bringing, companies want fresh thinking. So one route to success is to be a ‘moderate misfit,’ unhappy with the status quo and ready to innovate says Chamorrow-Premuzic. By moderate he means ‘you fit in well enough but are not so bland and risk averse as to lose the desire for change and progress.’”
“Misfit” in the age of big, bottomless data? But will our new world permit mistakes?
Scott Graber is a lawyer, novelist, veteran columnist and longtime resident of Port Royal. He can be reached at cscottgraber@gmail.com.
