AI is changing everything. When I write a feature story, a blog post, or the next chapter of my AI-augmented novel, I often start in GPT-4o, which I call Smartacus as my personal AI assistant.
When I took my first job as director of Union College’s news bureau in 1975, I started on a manual typewriter. Today, I write with AI and am collaborating with the Warren County Department of Planning and Community Development on a GPS-triggered walking tour of Lake Luzerne. Our next addition to Explore Warren County, it will feature stories narrated by historical figures, their voices generated by Artificial Intelligence.
I’m delighted by these newfound powers yet alarmed at the implications of where this unbridled advance of AI is heading, right into our very brains. That’s why I’m bemused.
Does everyone know about Elon Musk's deployment of Telephony? Are we all aware that Musk, Google’s Ray Kurzweil, and many others are forecasting the merger of human and artificial minds by 2045?
My grandchildren will be in their 30s. I’m trying to prepare them. The hard truth is that we must augment ourselves to keep up—or risk being left behind.
The challenge, of course, is that augmentation requires money. Without intentional policies to ensure equal access to transformative technologies, the divide between the haves and have-nots will inevitably widen. That’s what worries me most about AI: the potential for a future of profound inequality and/or technological tyranny.
When our minds merge with AI, we’ll find ourselves at a crossroads. Will we become gods, aligned with a superior intelligence we’ll never fully understand? Or will we become puppets, dangling from AI’s strings? How will we know the difference?
Dan Forbush
January 20, 2025
