When People Cannot Think for Themselves - Blame the Remote Control
When I was in sixth grade, I got a wicked stomachache – the kind that’d put you on the ground and hurt so bad that walking could only take place while hunched way, way over. Off to Dr. McMahon, likely the only pediatrician who put his cigar down in the exam room to perform the examination. They were good cigars, though - probably Cohiba. From there, I was off to the hospital, where I would soon be down a body part. The appendix isn’t necessary – other than to cause a real problem for some of us. And the insurance companies too…because of the multi-night hospital stays.
He was born in the 1920’s. Back then, I think the pediatricians prescribed Garcia Vegas.
I was born in September. So, in sixth grade, when all the others were turning 12, I was still 11. It was 39 years ago, and I remember the hospital bed and the way the pillow smelled after a couple of showerless days. I recall that there was no iPad, Gameboy, or even a Rubrics Cube. CD Player – Nope; Walkman – Nope; and, of course, no smartphone. It was a coloring book and crayons, do a puzzle, read comic books kinda time. When not in the hospital, it was roller skates (no pads), bikes (no helmets), and being friends with whoever has the bat and ball era of growth and development.
But there was one irrefutable benefit of being in my own bed in my own hospital room…and that was my own TV. It had a controller attached to a wire that went into the wall. There was a channel-up button, a channel-down button, and an off button. The channel dial would move and click from the Yankees game on WPIX to the Toronto Blue Jays game on CFTO. As bad as the pain from the surgery was, I had all the Jello I wanted and a TV that wouldn’t be commandeered by my father or my brother. I got to watch my shows when I wanted – and unlike at home, I could change the channels right from my bed, albeit with the smelly pillow.
Not quite 11 years old - but AI got the Jello right
The wire-to-the-wall remote control was my earliest remembrance of artificial intelligence. I mean, hell, I pressed a button, and the wire made the channel change. Amazing. I don’t think we could call it a remote control…could we? And nor could we call it artificial intelligence – but face the facts, folks. Imagine life without a remote control now. Or further – no dishwasher, no washing machine, or no dryer. The remote, dishwasher, and laundry machines are game changers that help us get more time out of our days and maybe even burn fewer calories. These technological advances didn’t take all that many jobs away. And it could likely be argued that they created more jobs – for someone out there has to fix this shit when it breaks.
Times change. Things get better, and more and more, the technology takes over. Machines that do laundry, wash dishes, change channels, and even wash our cars are great. But, over the past couple of decades, machines have increasingly been doing our thinking. And I fear that people are, or will be, doing less and less of that. I took a class on how to use AI. In the class, the instructors told us that AI wouldn’t take our jobs; instead, our jobs would be taken by people who really know how to make use of AI. I believe it.
If I wanted to right now, I could go on Chat GPT, Claude, or Perplexity and ask for a character analysis of Nora and Torvald Helmer in A Doll’s House by Henrick Ibsen. I’d toss in that my AP English Teacher served in Vietnam. I just did it, and who would have thought that Torvald’s adherence to social norms could be equated to what our Veterans experienced when they returned home from the war? When I was in High School, Mr. Grace screamed at me for copying a paper that he’d seen from my friend Steve Warszawski a couple of years before I handed it to him a second time – albeit a few years later—great memory on that dude.
Oh man, if I had Chat GPT in the 1990’s. No more missing assignments. Papers that would have taken days were done in seconds. I probably could have even written more notes to my high school GF – who always walked on the wrong side of the hall because she was a lefty. She loved getting notes. Kids like em today too…only they call them Snaps. Interesting thoughts – but what the hell is happening today? For starters, if a teacher is assigning the writing of papers – forget about it. If I had this stuff when I had to write my dissertation – I could have saved money because it wouldn’t have taken so damn many semesters to get it through. And to the fella who I know paid someone to write his dissertation for him, ostensibly, he wouldn’t have to worry about anyone finding out about what he did. Perplexity could have done it for free.
What is going to happen with this AI stuff in schools?
Some teachers are going to adapt, and they are going to move to Project Based Learning (PBL) – realizing that papers and worksheets are a thing of the past. Which teachers will adjust first? Those with the PD, the class size, and the support…of course. Legislation will eventually have to be passed to mandate PBL – but the damage will be done already…again. The kids in the well-funded districts will be able to think, and those in the socioeconomically underfunded districts won’t. The cities will lag behind the wealthy suburbs, and more and more charter schools will try to fill the void. However, colleges and universities will respond more quickly because tuition will stop rolling in otherwise.
One of my thoughts about AI is that it won’t be an equalizer. Instead, it will be the opposite. Learning opportunities for kids will be different based on the preparedness and willingness of teachers to change a two-century-old methodology—and this will not happen overnight. The rich will get richer, and the poor will get poorer. And it all started with the remote control if you ask me.