Connections matter – between people not technology

Sometimes an article pops up on my reading list, and I am not sure what to do with it … how to think through it, how to make sense of it and how to not follow the click-bait.

This article from The Dispatch had all the signs of a click bait post – a title: “Tempted by the false gods of convenience”

We all are so tempted and most of us have identified those false gods and work diligently to keep them where they belong. It did not help that the article focused on AI and how that could (if we let it) destroy humanity – not humans, but our humanity. The author also stays honest imho about the dualistic nature of technology and innovations – double edge sword to push the metaphor.

But, tools are tools. We humans have used them for a long time and often with terrible consequences… yet sometimes magical outcomes.

Here’s the crux for me, like any philosopher, those tools produce what we allow … nothing more, nothing less.

The post started with a famous composer’s comment about phonographs (recorded music), but the kernel of that pushback merits highlighting.

But more specifically, Sousa worried that recorded music would make us less likely to make music ourselves. After all, why, say, learn to play the piano when you could simply press play? For Sousa, half of the beauty in music comes from the personal element of its performance. He concluded his article thusly: “When a mother can turn on the phonograph with the same ease that she applies to the electric light, will she croon her baby to slumber with sweet lullabies, or will the infant be put to sleep by machinery?” In the age of the tablet-clutching child, this ought to hit home.

The Dispatch (article link)

This is the magic – our magic – humanity. Our passionate connections with other humans is the essence we must protect and maintain … without it, we too, are nothing but machines. Even if no human is there, the songs that come from our heart cannot be replicated digitally — maybe the sounds, but not the magic.

I repeat that I do not blithely dismiss the power of these tools for human good. If a scientist wishes to use AI tools to chart the decay of an ocean reef, so that she knows what can be done to fix it, more power to her. But if these tools are used to take from us our basic modes of expression and relationship, if the great false god of convenience crushes everything sincere and human in its path, then we ought at least to hesitate. Sousa was right when he noted that the value of a mother’s song is not in hitting the right notes. Rather, it is that she sings to her baby.

The Dispatch (article link)