Syracuse Post-Dispatch

 

By Bob Gaydos

    With the death of local newspapers, the co-opting of major media, the widespread fake news on social media, and the daily torrent of lies emanating from the White House and the Republican Party, it is often impossible these days to know what is actually going on in this country and the rest of the world. Therefore, I present here a list of 20 questions for our times. Honest answers would be welcome.

                                The Questions

1. Where in the world is Mitch McConnell?
2. Is he dead or alive?
3. Why did his wife go to China?
4. When and why did Marco Rubio turn in to Lindsay Graham?
5. Could Trump pass even a basic cognitive test today?
6. Will legal gambling and “probability betting” eventually destroy sports at all levels in this country?
7. Who killed Jeffrey Epstein?
8. How badly has Netanyahu fractured the America/Israel connection?
9. Are there aliens (non-earthlings) living among us?
10. What is the biggest threat from Artificial Intelligence?
11. Should the president be elected by popular vote?
12. Why does anyone care how fast a baseball leaves a major league stadium?
13. What religion will J.D. Vance convert to next?
14. Where in the world is Chuck Schumer?
15. Why are so many Americans, all the descendants of immigrants, so afraid of immigrants?
16. Has Putin already lost the war in Ukraine?
17. What will eventually replace the soulless Republican Party?
18. Should Supreme Court justices have term limits rather than lifetime appointments?
19. Should cursive writing still be taught in school?
20. How could anyone vote for Donald Trump TWICE?

   Feel free to respond to any question and to suggest any of your own. The list can grow. Remember, we’re all in this together.

By Bob Gaydos

Pope Leo XIV sees unchecked AI as a threat to humanity.

  Meet Generation Duh, the high school Class of 2026. They can’t read (only 35 percent are at or above proficiency standards), they can’t add (22 percent are at math standards), don’t know much about history, don’t know much biology, don’t know much about a science book, don’t know much about the French they took .,,

     But they do know all about A.I., and one and one still makes two. You still have to write papers to pass classes and it seems that high school and college students are more and more using A.I. programs to write their papers. But their instructors, paid to teach students how to actually use their language properly, are flagging the A.I. “creations” because the writing can be predictably formulaic and trite. (I can usually spot it 20 seconds into most YouTube offerings and that doesn’t count the mispronunciations.)

     But fear not all who resist putting pen to paper, the latest development in A.I. technology are programs — “tools” they’re called by their developers — to make A.I. “more human.”

     Think about that for a moment, fellow humans. Sit with it. A “tool” to make something artificial, something which, in fact, is based on the perhaps illegal thefts of lifetimes of creations by humans, read more like something humans created than something, well, artificial.

       Intelligence …?

      This is where we are.

      The creators, and some of them are young influencers on social media platforms, have come up with programs to make it harder to track the A.I. writing by making it seem more like humans did it. Put in typos. “Write” the paper over an extended period of time rather than dropping 1,000 words all at once to avoid programs that can detect the progress of a creation. Add a few extra words. Make it not quite so perfectly mediocre. Human.

       This of course is happening in conjunction with a social media revolution that is producing a generation of young people who not only do not write their own papers, but do not read anything but commentary on their phones, much of which is A.I. or human creation badly in need of editing. And yes, current reading scores reflect a significant decline in the reading levels of students that started with the pandemic and has worsened with the growth of social media and A.I.

       It is not a promising development in human evolution.

      This also is happening at a time when those in positions of power to put some guardrails on A.I., for example, the Congress of the United States, are so in awe of or financially indebted to huge tech corporations for campaign contributions that any mere suggestion of limits on Artificial Intelligence is met with blank stares. Also, Republicans, who have control of Congress, have spent most of this year in recess to avoid dealing with other issues (Jeffrey Epstein) that are embarrassing to their leader, Donald Trump.

     This avoidance of the A.I. issue also helps Trump because the remaining base of his dwindling support consists of the poorly educated and those currying to them for votes or profit.

     On the positive side, perhaps the most prominent voice to speak out for some need to protect and encourage human intelligence, indeed humanity as a species, is not a minor one — Pope Leo XIV. 

     The pope wrote a 42,300-word encyclical on the need to place limits on A.I. In essence, he warned that AI must serve humanity rather than concentrate power or automate human dignity out of existence. Yes, I am willing to believe he didn’t have A.I. write his paper for him.

      The Chicago native read his encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence, at the Vatican in May. He was standing next to Christopher Olah, co-founder of Anthropic, one of the pioneer A.I.companies.

       Olah responded to the pope’s remarks with a request. He said, “We need more of the world — religious communities, civil society, scholars, governments, and indeed all people of good will — to do what His Holiness has done here: to take this seriously, to look closely, and to push events in a better direction.”

      Briefly, according to both men, that means addressing what to do about all the people who will lose their jobs because of AI, how to prevent governments from using A.I. to make military decisions of life and death and how to avoid looking at the tech companies who develop A.I. as too rich and too powerful to be held accountable to the law and basic morality.

    To keep them, as well as their creation, more human. 

                                ***

(With apologies to Sam Cooke for stealing the words to his big hit, “Wonderful World,” and thanks to Google AI for quickly finding the pope’s and Olah’s comments on the future of AI.)

By Bob Gaydos

SpaceX, SpaceX, SpaceX, SpaceX, Musk, SpaceX, Tesla, SpaceX, SpaceX, trillion, Musk, SpaceX …

If you had even a fleeting awareness of media reporting on the stock market for the past week or so, you could not escape learning that Elon Musk was offering what turned out to be a record-breaking IPO, allowing all the world to buy stock in his out-of-this world company, SpaceX.

You would also have learned that Musk would retain control of 80 percent of the shares of the newly traded company and, oh yeah, that the rush to buy shares and the resulting valuation increase in his company had made the South African billionaire, the world’s first trillionaire.

The world’s richest man just got much richer.

Shares for SpaceX were initially offered at $135, closed at $161 on the first day and have risen and fallen in the week since the offering as all the financial “experts” try to figure out if this is a really good investment or not.

That’s not what this is about. This is about what the world’s richest man — the world’s first trillionaire — plans to do with his unprecedented wealth.

Take it to Mars. Or the Moon. Or, preferably, both.

Because, apparently, there’s nothing a trillion dollars could do to make life on Earth better, even simply more livable, for millions of earthlings in need of food, clean water, a decent place to live, good health care and a basic education.

No, the man born into wealth and possessing a gift for buying other people’s excellent ideas and turning them into the promise of progress, albeit apparently unfortunately delayed by other people’s short-sightedness, wants to create a colony on Mars and permanent habitats (domed condos?) on the Moon for those who won’t live long enough for the trip to Mars.

Swell.

Just what we need. A dream of a better life on another planet, presumably populated by residents of Musk’s choosing, which is to say, all white. Maybe even all conceived by him, the father of 15 right here on Earth.

He also wants to put energy stations in space to handle the load for the coming AI revolution, which holds the promise of creating a perfect society by eliminating millions of jobs on Earth for those who actually still have access to food, water, health care, etc. And, not to forget the military, Musk wants to boost the payloads of his Starship rocket to be able to transport military personnel and materials anywhere on earth in less than an hour. Just like Amazon. Make war more efficient for the highest bidder.

I don’t get it, but I can’t say I’m surprised. After all, it was Musk whom Donald Trump turned to when he wanted to eliminate tens of thousands of federal jobs, eliminate food and health programs in the United States and elsewhere on the planet and in general snoop around in everybody’s life.

Doge, they called it. Department of Government Efficiency. Musk failed at that. Somehow, his young geniuses couldn’t manage to follow the law while they set about destroying people’s lives. Trump fired him. But, heck, even driverless vehicles have problems sometimes, right? What’s the big deal? We’ll figure it out. He just needs a few billion more to work out the kinks.

It stinks. Yet billions are pouring into Musk’s new publicly traded company because no one apparently wants to miss out on the promise of profit, if not the actual thing. Spending billions to improve the lot and lives of people in Third World countries is apparently not an attractive investment. Tossing a few billion at Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, West Virginia, etc.? Forget about it. Even their own members of Congress wouldn’t buy into that.

The thing is, Musk could do both. He could take care of the many needs on Earth and still go to Mars with a pit stop on the Moon. Maybe there’s something in the genes of the super rich — at least some of them — that allows entitlement to smother gratitude. Giving back is not in the vocabulary. Heck, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, number two richest person on Earth, felt the need to buy the Washington Post, one of the nation’s most respected newspapers, and turn it into a hollow shell of its reputation because he didn’t like what it said about his rich friends.

Musk, of course, is entitled to do as he wishes with his money, within the law. But his new publicly traded SpaceX will allow the richest man on the planet to do as he wishes with a lot of other people’s money as well. I’m not sure a lot of people have thought through the return on their investment.

By  Bob Gaydos

The future workforce.

   Labor Day, 2050: “Attention, all humans. Your services will no longer be required in this establishment as of 5 p.m. Friday. Severance payments will be automatically deposited in your living accounts. Thank you for your service.”

    The familiar, warm voice on the loudspeaker was that of Art Intel, the general manager of the establishment, as all businesses had come to be described. No one knew why, but it didn’t seem to matter. That’s the way the robots liked it.

    The humans understood. They had seen this day coming for some time, but had long ago given up hope of avoiding it. The proof was too strong to ignore. The robots were simply stronger, smarter and more adaptable than they were. They got along better with each other. They never complained. Or got pregnant. When they got “sick,” they could easily be fixed. Or replaced. They didn’t need lunch breaks. And everything worked so much more smoothly.

    There had been a time some years back when humans first invented artificial intelligence and robots that some humans warned about placing limits on how the superpowers of the machines could be regulated so as not to cause harm to society. To make sure that greed, a human emotion, would not drive the creators of AI, as it was called, to seek ever more ways to get richer by developing ways that humans wouldn’t have to do many things they had been doing much of their lives.

    But many humans liked the idea of not having to work at some tasks. They thought the extra time could be spent traveling or watching and betting on sporting events, or something. So when labor unions started warning about the possibility of their jobs being lost, many humans dismissed it. Their elected leaders wouldn’t allow it, they said. They will protect us.

    But that didn’t happen. The so-called leaders, being human, could not resist the temptation of large sums of money being offered to them by the creators of AI to simply “trust them“ to do no harm. And so, the need for human intelligence quickly gave way to the speed, efficiency and economy of AI. Everyone saw it coming, yet no one saw it coming. Those who warned about the risks were simply ignored or shouted down. Some just disappeared.

     Soon, the computers begat robots which became smarter and begat more robots. Together, they did everything: cooking, cleaning, driving, building, writing, farming, teaching, acting, thinking. And they could fix each other. Humans, even those who had created such wonderful machines, didn’t need to be bothered with such things. They could have all the free time they wanted to do whatever they wanted to do. Art Intel would take care of everything.

    What could be so bad?

     On Labor Day 2051, the robots voted to eliminate Labor Day as a holiday, since they saw no need for it.

By Bob Gaydos

Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton settled their differences.

“May you live in interesting times.”

He keeps saying this, my friend. Over lunch. On the phone. “May you live in interesting times.”

It doesn’t help. Not when the current interpretation of “interesting” vacillates among “chaotic,” “disturbing,” “infuriating,” and “frightening.”

First of all, a lot of us (including me) have been blaming the Chinese for this bit of wisdom generally regarded as a curse. Not so, Google’s artificial intelligence informs me. (Glad it’s good for something useful.)

Direct quote from Google search: “The phrase ‘May you live in interesting times’ is often attributed as a Chinese curse, but it’s actually an English expression of unclear origin. It’s likely the phrase was misattributed as a Chinese saying, possibly by British politician Sir Austen Chamberlain in the 1930s. The phrase itself, ‘live in interesting times,’ can be traced back to the late 19th century in British political circles.”

So that’s that on the quote. The times, alas, are still with us and currently amount to two super-wealthy sociopaths swapping threats and insults with each other via social media in an apparent attempt to control the world.

I don’t really have a favorite in the cat fight between Donald Trump and Elon Musk. I don’t really find it entertaining. I just want them both to lose. That’s the only positive outcome I can see, but I can’t yet imagine how it comes about.

What I can say is that this was inevitable. Two spoiled little rich boys used to getting whatever they want who don’t give a damn about anyone else, totally lacking in impulse control and mostly in the dark about proper social behavior. Plus, they’re racist and bigoted. And liars. And cheats. And millions of Americans admired them and thought it was a wonderful idea to put them in charge of our country and our lives.

Interesting indeed.

What is interesting right now is watching to see if any Republican in Congress takes sides in this fight. Who represents the greatest threat to their continued presence in Congress? After all, that’s pretty much all they care about these days.

I would think Trump does because he’s got the MAGAnuts behind him. Musk has the money to threaten their reelection, but Trump still has the cult of personality going for him and the voters behind it. Elon is definitely damaging the golden boy’s image, but is anyone really surprised that Trump is in the Epstein files?

But is this any way to run a country? Is this any way to make America great again? An old man with declining mental capacities, sitting in the Oval Office and insulting world leaders who come to visit with him. A Nazi-saluting, richest man in the world, who may well have stolen the last presidential election for the man he is currently insinuating raped young girls.

Some choice.

Once upon a time, “gentlemen” settled differences of opinion without involving the rest of the world. Aaron Burr, at the time the vice president of the United States, finally got fed up with the opinions and statements of Alexander Hamilton, some of which were published in newspapers, and challenged his longtime political rival to a duel. Let’s settle this.

Pistols at the Weehawken Dueling Grounds.  Apparently, kind of like the Meadowlands of the day. On July 11, 1804, Hamilton was mortally wounded and died the next day. Burr was charged with murder, but eventually acquitted. He was later also acquitted of treason charges, but his reputation was shattered and his political career was over.

Interesting times.

By Bob Gaydos

Trump’s TruthSocial post

Boy, you take a couple days off from the news to do some weeding and cleaning up and it’s almost impossible to know where to start catching up on the craziness.

I guess the logical place to start is with my reading about Trump posting on his official social media page that Joe Biden was actually killed in 2020 and it’s been a robot parading around impersonating him ever since.

I had to go back and read that a couple of times just to be sure. Hard to top this one. Trump even repeated the revelation verbally to other real people later on. I guess the robot must have malfunctioned in that debate with Trump.

Qanon, where the story originated a few years back, must be thrilled, but I am at a loss for words.

I mean, you might as well have told me that the other stable genius and apparent no longer co-president Elon Musk was hooked on drugs and that he ran his whole DOGE scam while in a Ketamine cloud.

No way? Really? The guy who wants to single-handedly repopulate the Earth with as many willing partners as possible? The guy who recruited Steven Miller’s wife away from the White House to be his, umm assistant? The guy who bumped the Treasury Secretary in the hallway of the White House (not that he didn’t deserve it) and showed up for work the next day with a black left eye? That guy?

So Trump actually fired him because he found out Musk had no idea how government works and wasn’t actually saving any money in the budget? Oh, and the drugs story in the New York Times.

Well heck, turns out attention to detail hasn’t actually been a major requirement in this Oval Office. I also learned that Tulsi Gabbard, Director of Intelligence, is contemplating providing Fox News style daily briefings in the Oval Office instead of the normal written reports that every other president has always received. Apparently Trump “doesn’t read.” He’s actually only made 14 daily briefings since he took office. He’s golfed more than that. Shocking.

It’s probably safe to say that those daily reports did  not include mention of Sen.  Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, telling a constituent at a Town Hall meeting not to worry about someone dying because their Medicaid had been cut off because, “We are all going to die.” Touching.

The report also probably wouldn’t mention that Bobby Kennedy Junior over at the Health Department issued a report labeled Make America Healthy Again (MAHA, got it? ) that was written entirely by AI because all the researchers and scientists in the department have been fired. Also, it was totally false.

It seems actual scientists and doctors read the report and said none of the studies and reports, etc., listed in MAHA existed. Phony, like Bobby. C’mon, really?

The last surprise was a big one. Ukraine managed to pull off a massive drone attack inside Russia and destroy or disable about 40 strategic bombers as they sat at airfields. One-third of the Russian bomber fleet. No injuries for Ukraine. Huge. A plan a year in the making.

The big surprise? U.S. intelligence agencies knew nothing about it. That’s the kind of thing that’s not supposed to surprise them. Trump‘s response was that it wasn’t fair for Ukraine to attack those planes because they were “just sitting there not bothering anyone.” He said it would have been different if they were attacking someone in combat. “It’s like hitting someone who’s already down,” he said.

Keen sense of warfare there. Also, a strong suggestion of where his sympathies lie. Zelensky had this ace in the hole the whole time, including in his White House visit. Ukraine didn’t trust the U.S. with this big secret. Now the world knows.

It was just a couple of days off. This can’t survive.

By Bob Gaydos

A blast from the past.

I got a surprise birthday present  three weeks ago from my cousin, Tom Nalesnik. It was a surprise because a) It wasn’t my birthday b) I didn’t think Tom knew my birthday was coming up c) The gift itself was a memory of an ever-more distant past d) How he came by it was perhaps more surprising than the gift itself.

Yes, that’s me dancing in the Go Go cage with Crickett in the photo accompanying this column. The photo  is the gift. It’s a framed copy of a story I wrote about 60 years ago for The Sun-Bulletin in Binghamton, N.Y. There’s no date on the article, but I started working in Binghamton in 1965 and I clearly wasn’t covering the political beat yet when I wrote this. Disco was just coming to the Triple Cities area.

I also was quite svelte and better dressed than I am today.

Wow.

Tom said he got the article from my mom, who never said a word to me about my newspaper career. Never. Not even when I got fired. But that’s a story for another birthday.

This one is about time flying. Some call it progress. We’ve gone from Disco to TikTok in a virtual heartbeat. Typewriters, like the one I used to write about Crickett and her partner, Gena, are now museum exhibits. Soon, artificial intelligence will be plagiarizing this article to write a history of dancing to recorded music in bars and of pieces of folded paper called newspapers.

But not yet.

Crickett and me.

I don’t know if Crickett (Karen Levine) ever realized her dreams of publishing a big music hit or breeding racehorses. Or if her partner, Gena Maloney, ever did anything with her love of photography. (See, I did  interview the ladies.)

As far as I can remember, the bright idea to put the skinny reporter in the cage with the go-go dancers came from the photographer, Renee Myrae, an institution in New York newspaper photography. Make for a better photo, she said. That’s why there’s an annual award named after her for the best photography in the state. At least there used to be, when there were newspapers.

Anyway, I “danced” for about 10 minutes, there was applause and, as I noted, no one offered to buy me a drink.

The article wound up in The Sun-Bulletin, somehow made its way to my uncommunicative mom in Bayonne, N.J., who shared it with my cousin, Tom, in Linden, so he could tell me 60 years later that I inspired him to pursue a career in journalism and communication.

Some things are worth waiting for.

***

(Tom Nalesnik’s video commentary, “Whims of Resistance,” can be seen on substack.com, Instagram and Facebook.)

                               Friday, Nov. 8, 2024

By Bob Gaydos

     I saw a shooting star last night. Spoiler alert: Yes, this is going to be one of those “synchronicity strikes again, isn’t that something and it can only be a good sign” columns. 

     To start with, I’ve never seen a shooting star before. The only reason I saw this one is that Prince, our resident beagle/Australian shepherd mix decided he needed to take one more trip outside around midnight. Since he was already over his usual daily allotment of such outings, this was rare.

   We walked outside, I looked up at the sky, and said to myself, Wow, that is spectacular, referring to all the stars visible. When you live in the country, the lights of so-called civilization don’t interfere. Then I looked off to to my right, to the east, and sonofagun: shooting star. Cool.

     Of course, when I came back inside, I immediately posted my experience on Facebook. A good omen, I called it. 

     But of course, I checked with a reliable source. The Farmers Almanac told me: “With many people of all cultures looking to the heavens for signs, symbols, and answers for eons, it is no surprise that shooting star superstitions exist. The most prevalent superstition is that it is good luck to wish upon a star.  …

    “In the second century, the Greek astronomer Ptolemy hypothesized that they were a result of the gods peering down from heaven, having parted the heavens to do so and therefore dislodging a star in the process. Because a shooting star was a tangible symbol of the gods looking down at that moment, it was believed that a wish or request made upon seeing the star was more likely to be heard and granted. …

    “In the 1830s, the idea of wishing upon stars became even more prominent in modern beliefs. Seeing a meteor was believed to be a sign of promise, luck, and good fortune.”

      Looking for a second source, I turned to current science. Google AI told me this: “Some believe that seeing a shooting star is a sign of good fortune or luck. An old superstition suggests that wishing upon a shooting star will grant your wish.”

      Well, one man’s superstition is another man’s omen. And what some call coincidence, others see as synchronicity. It is all connected. One need only pay attention.

      Friends, trying to be helpful, pointed out to me that what I had seen was actually a meteor, part of a meteor shower expected last night. And scientists point out that if I were to go outside and lie down on my back and stare up at the sky for 15 minutes on a dark night, I might well see a dozen “shooting stars.“

     But I didn’t. I went out on this particular night, looked to my right (to the East, the good luck direction) and saw something I had never seen before, even out here in the country. It was like that black squirrel I wrote about a while back. Apparently, just not as rare.

      Anyway, I had a couple of wishes. I made them. I guess you’re supposed to keep the wishes secret so as not to jinx them. I will say that one of them concerned a legendary New York City baseball team located in the Bronx and a stroke of fortune that might befall them concerning another kind of shooting star if they look to the right.

    The other wish was political in nature. Any regular reader of my column could probably look to the right and voice some version of it. In fact, go ahead and do it on my star.

     Meteor, shmeteor, who am I to argue with Ptolemy?

    The gods are with us.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

By Bob Gaydos

Image from Storybench, Northeastern University School of Journalism

  That was fast. A while back, I wrote a column about how AI was coming to take my job and the jobs of maybe millions of other people lovingly referred to as “knowledge workers” by the CEOs of the companies who are rushing to make it happen.

     Well, it happened, in of all places, Wyoming.

      A reporter, new to the trade and no longer with the paper, admitted to using artificial intelligence to create quotes, even whole stories, for the Cody Enterprise, a newspaper founded by Buffalo Bill Cody, who needed no genius computer to create his legendary story.

      The phony reporter was busted by a veteran reporter for a competing newspaper, the Powell Tribune, who said he started asking around when he noted some of the phrases in the other guy’s stories seemed to be a bit off, or robotic. Bad writing.

       No surprise there. YouTube is replete with documentaries and special reports full of inappropriate or outdated or trite, slightly off phrasing narrated by “people” who mispronounce basic words. 

       At such times, I can be heard complaining agitatedly, “AI!”

       Also, preaching: “Everybody needs an editor.”

       It’s my favorite response and basic rule for any writer. But the YouTube videos go on, their producers seemingly unaware or unconcerned with the amateurish product they’re presenting. Artificial mediocrity suffices, probably because it draws an audience and it’s cheaper than employing the real thing. People.

         Which brings me back to Wyoming. Things were different in Wyoming. The governor and other people were saying they never said what the newspaper said they said, although they admitted it sounded like something they might have said.

          Classic AI. Scan the past and take a plausible shot at recreating it in the present. Chatbots always aim to please.

          But unlike YouTube shows, newspapers can get into trouble making stuff up, with or without AI. The publisher of The Enterprise said AI is “the new, advanced form of plagiarism and in the field of media and writing, plagiarism is something every media outlet has had to correct at some point or another.”

           She said the paper now has a policy in place to recognize AI-generated stories. That’s good. With no official controls on this new, still-developing technology, all news media should have a policy on the proper and improper use of artificial intelligence and make it known to the public as well as their staff.

           The editor of the Enterprise, Chris Bacon, said, “The Enterprise didn’t have an AI policy because it seemed obvious that journalists shouldn’t use it to write stories.”

          Yeah, one would think, right? But these are different times. Times of stolen user names, online dating scams, spam emails. Progress. While the recognized practice in journalism always has been not to steal other people’s writing and not to make stuff up, some have tried and some have been caught. Newspapers have been sued. But AI apparently makes it harder to spot, especially for less-experienced eyes.

        The AP says Bacon is “a military veteran and former air ambulance pilot who was named editor in May after a few months working as a reporter.” Swift promotion. 

        He said he “failed to catch” the AI copy and false quotes and apologized that “AI was allowed to put words that were never spoken” into stories in his newspaper. At least seven stories, seven people falsely quoted.

      I don’t know. Apparently one AI-generated story about a shooting in Yellowstone National Park included this sentence: “This incident serves as a stark reminder of the unpredictable nature of human behavior, even in the most serene settings.”

       In nearly half a century working in newspapers, I can’t recall a more unlikely sentence in a news story to have been allowed to pass unquestioned by a copy editor. No way Moe or Dennis or Linda or Tim lets me get away with that hackneyed life lesson without at least a, “Hey, Bob …” 

       Maybe my basic rule for writers needs to be modified: Everybody needs a really fussy human editor. 

rjgaydos@gmail.com

By Bob Gaydos

How will AI affect knowledge workers?

 I accidentally (by not being in charge of the remote) wandered into a YouTube Ted Talk by Cathie Wood the other day and, realizing I was a hostage, I half-listened for a while.

      Wood is founder and CEO of ARK, an investment company that in recent years has made her millions as well as making her the darling genius of every stock market/investment show on regular TV and YouTube. Tesla was her not-so-secret word. She’s soured on Nvidia. But that’s not what grabbed my attention this night. This talk wasn’t about what stock to buy. It was about artificial intelligence. AI.

    “Did she just say ‘knowledge workers,’?” I asked the person in charge of the remote.

      “Uh huh.”

      “What the heck are ‘knowledge workers’?” I said quietly to myself, so as not to disturb anyone actually listening to the talk. Google will know.

       And it did.

       A variety of Human Resources sources told me pretty much the same thing. “Knowledge work” requires a high degree of cognitive skill, competence, knowledge, curiosity, expertise and creativity in problem-solving, critical thinking, gathering data, analyzing trends and decision-making. The work involves solving issues, making judgments. Applying knowledge.

     It sounded important.

     “Heck,” I thought to myself, “I was a knowledge worker.”

      One source# confirmed that with this list of  professional knowledge workers:

• Accountant
• Computer Programmer
• Consultant
• Data/Systems Analyst
• Designer
• Engineer
• Lawyer
• Marketing/Financial Analyst
• Pharmacist
• Physician
• Researcher
• Scientist
• Software Developer
• Web Designer
• Writer/Author

    There I was. At the bottom of the list, but it was alphabetical. I was and still am a knowledge worker, at least in the words and world of Cathie Wood and all those other CEOs of hedge funds and Big Tech companies. 

      I used to be content being identified as a newspaperman or journalist. It was simple and understandable to everyone for about half a century. I wrote stuff to let people know what was going on in the world and maybe help them make sense of it. I tried.

      But the Internet introduced a new brand of people doing the same thing. Sort of. First, there came “influencers.” These are people who post information on social media platforms for others to view or read and react to. Well, I did that. Still do. But I didn’t get any contracts from companies to push their jeans or sneakers or other products. I guess I was not a very influential influencer.

      Then came the most insulting of all terms, the one so many professional HR people on Linkedin seem to be looking for daily: “Content creators.”

        The operating philosophy here seems to be, “We don’t really care how good or accurate or timely or well-written or even creative your content is, as much as we care that there’s enough of it to occupy our platform daily. Click bait is acceptable.”

        Some of the “content” is readable. Much is not, at least in the judgment of this knowledge worker.

        However, the salient point in this discussion is not so much who is or who is not a knowledge worker, but rather, is this a job title in danger of disappearing, not because the titans of industry have figured out yet another way to label mere mortals in a condescending manner, but because their seemingly vital jobs will be filled by computer chips.

      Wood, remember, was talking about AI. The question being, how will AI affect the need for all these knowledge workers in the future? Can these big firms save a bundle of money by having AI do the work of knowledgeable, creative people who are good at solving problems and decision-making? 

    To which I reply, “How can such a knowledge worker today even recommend a change that may eliminate his or her job?”

     AI is far from there, as anyone who watches some of the prepared programming on YouTube about how to make your life better, or what country to move to or Medieval history is aware. The content is often comparable to a poorly written fifth-grade essay plagiarized from a variety of sources and a “narrator” who often can’t pronounce the words correctly.

   It’s clear no human had a hand in presenting this program and, apparently, no human ever bothered to edit it to make it less amateurish. Because, you know, money saved. The lure of AI.

Cathie Wood

           But this is just the beginning, as Wood reminds us, and the Big Techs will go as far as they can, unless someone (Congress?) says “That’s too far.”

      The HR specialists I found in my knowledge worker capacity noted that “knowledge work” is intangible. This means it does not include physical labor or manual tasks. But if you work with your hands and you’re good at it, don’t get too cocky regarding artificial intelligence and your future. Wood has another scary word in her vocabulary: Robots. She loves them.

      Now, to be fair and thorough, I must note that there’s also another word that has been applied to people who do what I do, which included writing daily newspaper editorials for 23 years: Pundit.

       Here’s how Wikipedia, defines it: “A pundit is a learned person who offers opinion in an authoritative manner on a particular subject area (typically politics, the social sciences, technology or sport), usually through the mass media.”

        I’m not trying to beef up my obituary, but I think that fits me and this pundit suggests that other knowledge workers pay close attention when millionaire influencers like Cathie Wood start talking about replacing them with computerized content creators. Eventually it won’t be just rising stock prices and amateurish YouTube shows.

       And that’s my Ted Talk today.

(# Much of the information on knowledge workers in this column is from a piece by Robin Modell for Flexjobs. She is an experienced journalist, author and corporate writer and a contributor to the On Careers section of U.S. News & World Report. Clearly, a knowledge worker.)

rjgaydos@gmail.com