September 28, 1987.
I was a bit over 4 years old. Hell, to this day, I can remember having a Star Trek TOS themed birthday cake that year – But more specifically, I can remember getting to stay up past bedtime to watch the premier episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Had I known then what kind of impact that franchise would have on me for the rest of my life – Quite frankly, there’s no way I could fathom what my 4 year old brain would have done with that knowledge.
Here’s what I do know – While I could stand on a soapbox and blather on about what Star Trek has done for me over the years, that’s not what this article is about. That’s not the reason I’m sitting here in the middle of the night trying to think of what to write about. To say, the idea that something that has had such a long-lasting impact on me is just a FRACTION of what this is about – Well.
Everybody’s story has roots that they grew from, and I can say with upmost certainty that my love for Star Trek – More specifically, Brent Spiner’s Commander Data/Lore/Soong Droids have had much of a lasting impact – in a way that took decades for me to really understand.
How I went from a Life long Star Trek Nerd to A.I. Enthusiast looking to change gears?
Listen. It wasn’t Just Data. It was Johnny 5. It was the T-800. It was Hal 9000. It was Robocop, C3P0 & R2D2, Marvin the paranoid Android. Bicentennial Man or even The film “Artificial intelligence”. A.I. has been in our pop culture for as long as we could count – Even going back to the 1950’s with “The Day the Earth Stood Still’s” “Gort”.
While I’ve always been fascinated with all the Killer Robots and Scary A.I. takeovers, there’s always been something about it that struck a nerve. I always felt that there were more layers than just “Janet pissed off the toaster so now we’re all doomed” Now, here in 2024, we are (Dare I say… ”Balls Deep”) into the long-feared “A.I. Revolution”. It’s just not happening in the way that we thought it would – Because as pop-culture has always reminded us, at the end of the day, the robots are going to kill us all, right?
Remember Y2K? (Yeah. I know. Damn near 25 years already. We’re old.) What was the big fear? A total societal collapse all because of outdated coding used in LITERALLY everything with a CPU. What happened? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I can remember getting sloshed off Peach Schnapps & Playing endless rounds of “Ready 2 Rumble” while occasionally peeking outside every now and again to see if the planet was on fire & if I had to run home and grab the Rifle, I was LITERALLY SHOWN HOURS AGO how to use. Those were exciting times, for sure.
But Fuckall happened. We made Jokes. Chris Jericho Revitalized his career off of it. Silverchair made the “One Hit Wonders” list for it. We moved on. What was all the fear actually about? It wasn’t even A.I. related. It was about confusion over if a PC would know how to move from the end of one century to the next – and wondering if it would thing going from “99” to “00” would just fuck everything all to hell (And before the “Well Actually…” crowd chimes in – Yes, I realize that it was more than just PC’s, as it had more to do with Infrastructure-related systems thinking we were 100 years behind than your home Computer starting an uprising. Sit down and wait your turn, please!)
But here in July 2024, with real life politics looking more like a bad episode of “Desperate Housewives” than actual progress, Where Chatbots galore are wanting to talk to you. Generative A.I. is just flipping the table for the Creative Arts Industries. Meanwhile, the general populous seems to be preoccupied with Trying to navigate how to do an online return for the big Not so eco-friendly Digital Buy-all-the-shit Marketplace.
Okay, Twisted – What in the ACUTAL F@#! Are you on about? Did you lose the plot again?
Basically. I’m back to ramble – But this time around, it’s about something you should be caring about – And not just because I think my taste is awesome. A.I. Is here, and we need to buck up and actually start paying attention – And making sure we’re taking the proper steps to make sure not only does *IT* not get carried away – but we need to make sure we all have a good definition of what *The right way* Is. While Big Corpo’s are dragging Generative A.I. companies such as Midjourney, Suno, Stable Diffusion, and more through some Lawfare – Which, to be fair, We should have been working on figuring out how to navigate Copyrights & Such with generative A.I. LONG before now, But here we are – And THAT is for another article.
Now I’m not here to say *I* know better than the actual engineers and code monkeys out there who are writing commands for it. Because I don’t have enough time (Or space in my brain these days) to sit down and think about learning Python or the hundreds of scripting languages one could use. However, We need to be paying attention to not just WHAT we’re putting out there for an A.I. to learn from – But we need to break it down to Morals and ethics – they are NOT universal – which is problematic when you’re developing something that you want to fit Every possible box. What may be morally or ethically acceptable in The US, may not be acceptable in say – India (You don’t want a Chatbot accidentally recommending a steak dinner recipe to someone who’s practicing Hindu if they say “What should I make for dinner”)
On the other side of that same coin – We also need to be prepared – And figure out some healthy safeguards for the inevitable – The “Bad Actors” out there who are going to absolutely use these tools with full malice to deceive, steal, mislead, scam. You name it. As much as we want to fear A.I. – One important thing to remember is that at THIS point in time, we’re not actively dealing with systems that are considered “General” A.I. – i.e., the big bad self-aware system that’s going to kill us all Skynet style while passing every test we throw at it.
WE, the humans teaching these things – Who are feeding dataset after dataset into these things – WE ARE THE INTELLIGENCE. Which, in 20+ years of customer service I can rightfully say is a scary bloody thing – But at the end of the day – is the harshest reality. We all remember “Tay” right? Microsoft’s cute little Chatbot turned Nazi extremist less than 24 hours after it was released to the public? Quick enough for Microsoft to pull the plug and say “WTF Y’all..” Sometimes I wonder how many of the folks that fed BS into that thing actually went off into the Computer Science field, and eventually joined up with one of the big A.I. companies. Just food for thought.
Listen, I know I’ve been rambling like a drunk uncle at Thanksgiving, but that’s kind of the point, right? We’re diving headfirst into this A.I. rabbit hole, and I’m just the idiot with a flashlight trying to make sense of it all. Am I an expert? Hell no. But I’m curious, I’m stubborn, and I’ve got enough pop culture references to make even the most convoluted A.I. concepts sound like a bad episode of Black Mirror.
So, here’s the deal: I’m back in the saddle, ready to serve up some hot takes on A.I. that’ll make your brain cells do the cha-cha. Will it be regular? Maybe. Will it be mind-blowing? Probably not. But it’ll be honest, it’ll be messy, and it’ll be a hell of a lot more fun than trying to explain to your grandma why her Alexa isn’t actually plotting world domination.
Buckle up, fellow nerds, because We’re about to boldly go where no half-assed blogger has gone before, and if we’re lucky, maybe we’ll figure out how to stop the robots from stealing our jobs before they realize how much we suck at them anyway.
Stay tuned, stay curious, and for the love of Cthulhu, don’t teach your toaster to feel. Trust me on this one.
2
