Is intuition obsolete? What about our accumulated layers of information and feelings or what we might call seasoning? Including, of course, the lessons from failures and the information-laden seams of character? Or, the fruits of relationships—the improvisational values of collaboration?
It was 1959. One of the greatest jazz pieces ever composed, “Take Five”, was performed by the Dave Brubeck Quartet. The melody was written by Paul Desmond, but the band collaborated on the final fusion of ideas and musical notes. Brubeck created the harmonic foundation and Joe Morello the famous drum pattern.
“Take Five” is both Desmond’s composition and a Brubeck Quartet creation. A collaboration for the ages.
Are the coders with their artificial intelligence (AI) tools going to upstage fertile minds? Minds shaped and reshaped by life? Can they turn the generative algorithms into 21st-century creators without pirating previous works? Can AI models take humans out of the equation?
At the risk of mixing up input and outcomes, here are some recent experiences—the complex and simple kind. When I got my knees replaced, I offhandedly referred to the surgery as robotic chainsawing. Thank goodness for the strides in pain management. My research and subsequent experience suggest that doctors working with robotic tools are a generation or two more effective in the removal of the old and integrating the new.
But then how much do we want tools to get in the middle? For example, in a recent trip back from New York, I came face-to-face with both a person and a screen at the same service area on the New Jersey Turnpike. As required by New Jersey law, a human pumped gas and cleaned the car window while my wife had to figure out the tablet interface at a ShakeShack. Best in show: the gas attendant, not the interface,
Whether we are dealing with a medical breakthrough or ordering sandwiches, humans can be either crucial or welcome. I am afraid that when they are just welcome they will disappear. Too bad, variations on the default format go missing, and hospitality is nonexistent.
As one friend of mine often quips, “Here’s the thing.” I started with a slide rule, welcomed the electronic spreadsheet, and then the calculator, followed quickly by the computerization of most things.
Technology attracts investment. And, return on investment will require volume—a robust demand side. The capital investment in AI is without precedent and that will help to assure the ultimate flipped script. Will we flip from humanics to mechanics? If so what will be lost, a civilization?
A recent headline in the Wall Street Journal proclaimed “The College Students Who Can’t Do Elementary Math.” The underlying story verified that many students at the University of California, San Diego can’t round numbers or add fractions. If you cannot tally up numbers, trouble will follow.
Regardless, as momentum flips the script, the depth of human creativity will remain crucial to progress and humanity. But, if AI becomes a substitute for thinking, the incurious will need to muscle up.
Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al writes on themes from his book, Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books.
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