As a child, I used to be afraid of quick sand and self-combustion. Not that I lived in a place where you could fall in quick sand or that self-combustion was something that ever happened. However, if you watched TV, quick sand and burning spontaneously were possibilities of something going wrong.
While growing up I became afraid or worried about other things—although I still worry about sand. I fear forgetting words and names, particularly when I stopped using a language. I worry about climate change and the poor way we often manage the environment. I worry about authoritarianism and how people abuse power. I fear how numb we are with the criminal abuse in Gaza.
I fear that one day I will stop learning; even worse, that I may choose to stop learning. I worry that many of us may believe that ‘things have always been like this’ and we forget that they haven’t. I fear that we might stop experimenting.
I learnt to program computers using Basic. Then I learnt SAS (really well if I may say so), Fortran, Python, Matlab, Mathematica and R. I also played with some APL and C++. I am afraid that I’ve forgotten most of it. I fear that one day I will stop trying new languages.
I have been told that AI is the future. However, before that I was told that massive open online courses were the future. After that the blockchain and cryptocurrencies were the future. And monkey-looking-non-fungible token were the future two years or so ago. I fear that I am being gaslighted, that surely AI could write my code in Basic, SAS, Fortran, Python, Matlab, Mathematica, R, APL and C++… but I will not have experienced understanding new ways of computing, of framing problems, vectorising, etc. It’s like watching a movie versus living what is presented in the movie. There is no comparison.
I fear that companies are pushing replacing the process of learning, which can be sometimes uncomfortable, with the outputs of learning. We are given the report, the graph, the outline, the mind map but we are as empty as before embarking into the task. I worry that we are devaluing learning in the search for increasing a badly defined ‘productivity’.
I was reading an assignment, making corrections, thinking ‘I hope this student “gets” the feedback’. Funnily enough, the assignment was too poorly-written to pass as AI, but I could see ways to improving how this particular human could explain what was in their mind. I have no interest in following this process for computer-generated text.
It is customary to finish off with a positive note or a call to change things. I am afraid that I will disappoint you. I firmly believe that we have to push back, to remind ourselves of our deep humanity, that the process is what changes us for the better, that we should not accept to feel numb. However, ‘la contienda es desigual’ (Prat 1879) ‘the struggle is unequal’ and I have no idea how things will evolve in the coming ten years. With some luck, the gaslighters will push something else as the new, new future. On the plus side, I do not fear self-combustion anymore.
