A lot of my friends are asking me how I think AI will impact our lives and niche outdoor websites like SectionHiker.com. To be honest, I don’t think it’s going to be as big an impact as the technologists, venture capitalists, or press promoting it want it to. Even if it is successful, the rich will just get richer and everyone else will have to keep plugging away doing what they’re doing today. I hope I’m wrong, but I’ve seen a lot of software fads come and go and I’m pretty sure that will happen in this case too.
I may be jaded. I spent many years in graduate school and working as a software engineer on Artificial Intelligence Applications and they were all painfully stupid. While the computer chips and computing speeds today are a gazillion times faster than 30 years ago, I don’t see that changing. Artificial Intelligences don’t have bodies, they don’t have or understand emotions, they don’t understand time, or have any common sense. Without them, you just have a jack-in-the-box, not an intelligent being or even one that sounds like one.
It’s true, you can teach an AI to take pizza orders or control the french fry machine at Mcdonald’s. But don’t worry, those jobs are not going away. People are willing to do them for a lot less than what leasing an AI will cost. AI is not going to eliminate all of the trades and manual labor jobs that exist today. It’s not going to replace doctors, nurses, ski coaches, bricklayers, plumbers, or anyone who relies on their body or sight, smell, taste, or physical sensation to perform their jobs.
Take SectionHiker.com as a case in point.
- An AI can’t do a gear or clothing review because they don’t have bodies and don’t feel physical sensations.
- They can’t teach hiking and backpacking skills because they can’t identify with the frustration a beginner feels or the incremental attainment of a new skill.
- They can’t write a trip report or share the wonder and awe that the outdoors provides.
- They can’t distinguish fact from fantasy because they don’t have any common sense.
All they can do is summarize and regurgitate the text and insights that someone else has written, but that technology has been around for the past 40 years and well before it was rebranded as AI.
But more importantly, would you trust anything an AI says, knowing that it’s never experienced any of it? No, and therein lies the reason why AI’s impact will be so limited. People won’t trust AIs and they won’t be able to form any kind of meaningful connection or relationship with an AI knowing that the feeling cannot be reciprocated. People want connection, not just facts, which is why a lot of famous people have followings even though they are liars or complete idiots.
Sadly AI’s will probably produce all the same rubbish that floods the internet and social media today making the information published there even more suspect. The only difference is that it will be a lot more expensive than hiring a human to do it.
Those are my thoughts. What do you think?
