In today’s episode, I share some follow up listener comments to the prior discussion about the intersection between spending (or saving!) and planning, and then delve into a (somewhat raw!) discussion of my feelings around AI, starting with a historical example — my 2010s thoughts on the emerging iPhone!
Feel free to share your thoughts on technology — I know there is a nuanced and complex conversation to be had here!
Reference mentioned in the first section: Elisabeth’s blog
9 Comments
I appreciated your thoughts on AI! I was nothing but excited about the iPhone and could not wait for it to be an option through Verizon as I was not willing to change cell phone providers to get one. I am honestly not very positive about AI. I am trying to be open minded but I worry about all of the jobs that will go away as a result of AI. I have yet to use ChatGPT, etc. I just haven’t found a reason to use them but I know I should do some experimenting, especially for macro-based meal plans. My company has its own closed-system AI platform and they track whether you are using it. I would say about 80% of my work is client-facing so it can’t/shouldn’t be done with AI so there aren’t a lot of applications in my role, but I know our research analysts use it a ton. I had conversations last week when I was traveling about whether 1) our kids would learn to drive (I said yes, my colleagues didn’t think so – I know self-driving cars will be more prominent but will everyone want to spend the $$ on that new technology? I say that as someone with a 2014 Corolla with about 30k miles on it that would be a great car for our oldest when he starts to drive.) and 2) our kids would go to college (again I said I hoped so, my colleagues were skeptical that it would be worth the rising cost – I think going to a trade school may be a more popular choice in the future since many trade school fields are fairly AI-proof).
But thinking about this/talking about it bums me out so very much. I appreciate that AI will make some things easier, but I think there is value in learning some “grunt work” – like my field, I think you need to be able to analyze financial statements of a company to understand how companies work/what makes a company vulnerable. If AI does that, people lose a valuable skill. I am trying to be open-minded, though.
Thanks for this episode Sarah, I was hoping you’d do a follow up after the previous AI one. Firstly, it was fascinating to hear your thoughts on the iPhone – what a valuable insight into how you were thinking at various points in time, and how those concerns are also usually quite timeless. It will be the same with AI.
For me, it comes down to what do we want to outsource in life. For some people, hiring a gardener is essential – they do not have the capacity (time, energy, health, skills, etc) themselves. For others, it would take away a huge amount of benefits that it would be unthinkable right now (enjoyment, strength, fitness, getting outside, skills, etc). We always gain and lose things when we outsource them. It comes down to being intentional about deciding what things we want to outsource. If we outsource all our thinking, all our wrestling with trying to understand things, all our knowledge, how will we know if the AI we’ve outsourced to is doing a good job or not? Where the stakes are high (health, finances, safety, etc), the risks of outsourcing to AI are also higher. And often, the time spent checking can be more than the time it would have taken to do the thing in the first place.
You mentioned pitches for your podcast that are likely AI-generated. I’ve seen other talking about this – how it’s fundamentally dishonest and makes it harder for sincere pitches to be heard amongst the growing noise. To add to your list of things you don’t want AI for, I don’t want sincerity to be outsourced.
When you talked about the problem of more and more emails, I thought about what I wrote on my blog recently:
“Consider the current trend by AI evangelists to build an AI agent that creates a customized “morning report.” This agent is designed to triage your inbox, summarize your calendar and outstanding tasks, and provide a plan for your day. The goal is to save time, reduce overwhelm, and eliminate the friction of manual labor.
But a morning report is a band-aid. It manages the symptoms of an overflowing inbox, but it doesn’t solve the underlying disease of an unsustainable schedule. Aside from the potential for AI errors, we have to ask: if we don’t self-regulate our own inputs, do we lose the ability to practice intentionality? When we surrender the practice of deciding what is signal and what is noise, we lose access not just to our data, but to our competence.
AI automation is being sold as the solution to surviving the flood of content that AI is simultaneously creating. It reminds me of the “Fix-it-Up Chappie” from Dr. Seuss’ The Sneetches. It’s the same playbook: sell the problem, then sell the solution to the problem you created.”
I want my interactions to be with real people, but now I start suspecting everything and that’s sad. It’s this daily erosion of trust which snowballs into a much bigger loss.
ooh yes Rachel – appreciate these thoughts. I am not interested in AI telling me what my priorities are for the day. That feels like overreach to me. I’ll take the tradeoff in productivity I guess . . .
My old boss in public accounting avoided inbox overload by calling everyone back. All the clients were trained to use the phone with us. I was part time, but some days I could go all day without a client email. I would get phone calls too, and I would often say I’ll research that and get back to you. Everyone was happy with that. The clients were super loyal because we had a more personal relationship. It was glorious! My husband is a solo practice lawyer, and he was drowning in emails. I told him about the old fashioned phone call trick, and his workload shrunk significantly. And people are less rude on the phone 😉
I’ve found somewhat the opposite -using MyChart to send messages to patients is SO MUCH FASTER than calling. But once messages go back and forth 1-2x it absolutely has to be a call (or an appointment) or we’ll be texting back and forth indefinitely!
Ironically, I never went to the second sauna… but I guess that means I saved even more money?? Definitely going on my “next time in Finland” list, though. And I’ll be sure to bring my own towel 😉
Sarah, I really appreciated your thoughts and sharing your iPhone reflections – your blog is such an amazing time capsule!!
For AI resources, I recommend Data & Society: https://datasociety.net/. They are definitely critical of broad generative AI and its impact but are also very grounded in academic/scholarly work.
ooh this is helpful – thank you!
Hi Sarah- you mentioned you were interested in additional female perspectives on AI. I heard Tina Tallon (faculty at the Ohio State University) speak at a music education conference a few months ago and found her to be so insightful and a reasonable voice about caution, but also optimistic in ways that AI can be harnessed for good! A lot of her research and the students she mentors are doing work to help people with visual and auditory disabilities, particularly in ways that they can engage with music performance.
https://music.osu.edu/people/tallon.10
https://tinatallon.com/research/
Hope these are interesting reading for you!