The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

There was a recent article about the use of Artificial Intelligence in our kids’ classrooms, the thrust of it concerning how easy it is now for us to rely on ChatGPT or Google or you name it to find the math answers, write their essays, compose their short stories, just let the bots do it. Remember when Texas Instruments came out with a hand held calculator? Why learn multiplication tables or long division? Throw away those slide rules, the future was here!

Well, not quite but the digital handwriting was on the wall … or a least a computer screen. The folks who say AI is just a tool, makes life easier, frees us up for our real human potential, c’mon, the machines are more than an assistant, you kidding me? The next generation of homo not very sapien will be more and more reliant on these programs, algorithms, bots and indispensable partners in every endeavor, every workplace, every home and probably every brain on the planet. We’ll implant chips in our heads, count on it! Just a tool ….

And what a tool! Smarter than us, eventually more creative than us, probably be better dancers than us, better musicians, better writers. Let the machine do it. Let AI handle that. Give us humans more time for daytime TV and game shows, more leisure hours at the casino or on vacation. If we still have vacations when the computers take over our jobs. Maybe they’ll figure out a New Economics, what do to with the jobless, the homeless and the hopeless.

The Brave New World is coming — hell, it’s here now. Go and visit our classrooms, the Pied Piper is calling all the children. Where it’s taking them, damned if I know, maybe a brighter future, might even be the answer to prayers on the solution to world problems. But it won’t be the next step in evolution, beyond biology, certainly beyond my comprehension. You think I’m afraid? Damn right I’m afraid! Tool my ass. We’ll be the tools.

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