Is AI better than a washing machine?
Is AI better than a washing machine?
Washing Machine is the gold standard of a life-changing technology. Can AI do better? Should we be more like Amish? Plus U-shaped theory of tools.
New technologies are changing our societies. It’s hard to evaluate those changes in isolation, but an argument can be made that technological progress has had some toll.
And we’re only getting started. AI advancements seem to be accelerating every day, and we haven’t yet fully dealt with the impact of smartphones.
Are we going in a direction that is not “humanity” anymore? Should we just… stop?
We are technology
Leveraging and improving technology makes us stand out from the rest of the animal kingdom. Chimpanzees are stronger, cockroaches more resilient, and I know dogs smarter than some people.
Despite that, using technology, we climbed to the top of the food chain (for better or worse). Writing, language, stories, fire, wheel, combustion engine, internet, mayonaise - are all advances in technology that unlocked new opportunities for humans.
We use tools and share our improvements with others to build upon our work. As Thomas Suddendorf, the author of “The Gap: The Science of What Separates Us from Other Animals,“ states in the Scientific American:
Most of our extraordinary powers, when you think about it, derive from our collective wit. Consider that we all benefit from the tools and technologies other people invented. Many animals use tools, and some even make them, but to turn them into an innovation, one has to recognize that it will be useful again in the future. After that realization, one has a reason to retain the tool, to refine it further and to share it with others.
For better or worse, our entire race depends on technological progress. Calling for rejecting that path is like asking an animal to start living off photosynthesis. If that will ever happen, we’ll be the only animal to pull it off, only thanks to technology.
Not every technology is beneficial.
The Amish are a famously reclusive, tightly-knit group. Sometimes they are used as an example of rejecting the modern world altogether, but the truth is that they are much more thoughtful than we are in the western world.
When adopting new technology, they always evaluate:
Will this hurt the Amish way of life and the close connections of our community?
Amish keep up-to-date with modern advances through the practice of “Rumspringa“ - after their 16th birthday, the young Amish are free to roam around and sample the western world. They come back with new discoveries to evaluate.
Becuse Amish houses are not wired for electricity, they use compressed air and convert the off-the-shelves tools to use that medium. (I recommend the Sustainable Living store where you can find some tools for Amish)
The Convival Society has a great list of questions to consider when adopting a new technology.
“AI” is just another tool.
Current AI advancements are another step in a long line of tools providing more leverage for humans to accomplish their goals and, hopefully - spend more time on leisure and art instead of labor.
Despite all the hype, they are not much different from a washing machine:
You have to sort your colors (find a task suitable to delegate onto GPT)
You have to load the machine (prepare the prompt)
Turn it on
Unload and hang your laundry (check the output and use it in your projects)
Washing machines are amazing technology that has unlocked human potential and saved women thousands of hours so they can focus on other pursuits.
I am not sure AI can match that revolution. Hans Rosling explains in my favorite TED Talk:
We’re now in the evaluation phase. We need to test what they are capable of and decide which pieces are worth keeping and which do not help our society. I am both enthusiastic about AI and think we should be slightly more like Amish.
What I have been up to
Last week at work, I created a Slack Bot on top of ChatGPT and gave it a little personality. That unlocked tremendous entertainment value in some channels and was legitimately helpful in others:
U-shaped theory of tools
As you have surmised by now, I spent some time thinking about software tools, how to build them, and how they work together. I own a small workshop as well with some woodworking tools.
For a while now, I have been working on the following theory of tools:
Tools should either be very generic (like a hammer) or very specialized (like a dog tick-picker).
Chosing a generic tool takes no cognitive load. You have your go-to hammer or a knife you always use if you can.
When that is not enough, you go for something suited to exactly this case, if you have it.
Picking something kinda-suited to this situation, but not really requires you to mentally go through every tool you own, so you end up settling on a hammer or a knife even though you may own something better.
At the time of writing this email, ThereIsAnAiForThat.com, a database of AI-powered tools, contains 2492 entries and counting. If we were to treat my theory seriously, most of them are in the middle of the specialization curve (X-axis above), resulting in not much use.
The theory also explains why ChatGPT became so popular: It’s a very generic, all-purpose tool. Even though some more specialized ones would do a better job, it would require too much brain power to remember which one to use and how it works.