Where To Find the AI In Our Lives

Trying to figure out how AI already influences almost everything we do, a NY Times journalist dedicated 48 hours to avoiding it.

Where To Find AI

During those two days, his focus was the generative AI that creates our papers and images, and the machine learning programs that update themselves with new knowledge.

Day 1

Awakening, to avoid face recognition, he could not hold his iPhone screen. As for his usual destinations, there would be no Instagram, Facebook, current events, or any social media that use AI for research. Since AI checks email for spam, that was off limits. Next, his wife pointed out that their grid uses AI to allocate voltage so he could not touch the light switch. In addition, water presented a similar challenge since the NYC water authority inputs data to an AI program. Getting dressed, he thought about his H&M pants that traveled along a cargo shipping route determined by AI and put them back in the closet.

Departing for a lunch date, he could not check his weather app. Neither could he take out the garbage since the NYC sanitation system uses trash sorting robots and AI routing for its trucks. Instead of the subway or Uber, he hopped on his son’s old bike. When he needed directions, neither Waze nor Google Maps were possibilities.

Later, at the end of his lunch date, he had to pay with cash. But he was sure the food he had consumed was tainted by AI as well as Resy, the source of his reservation and his restaurant’s invoicing procedures.

Day 2

Relaxing the next day, he watched a DVD on a portable DVD player. To make a phone call, he had to use his landline phone. During that call to ebay, he tried to get a human on the phone but had no success.

Finally, trying to write his news article, he replaced his laptop MacBook Pro with a typewriter and the grid by using candlelight.

Our Bottom Line: Land, Labor, and Capital

The omnipresence of AI is recent. Looking at its spread, we would see seizmic shifts in our land, labor, and capital.

Oversimplifying, we can cite the land used by AI data centers. With labor, jobs have been created and lost. But it’s physical and human capital that are most affected. With physical capital, not only could we cite new equipment but also, the computer chips fueling many of AI’s tasks. Then, defined as the new knowledge we accumulate, our human capital could be transformed.

Concluding, we should visit Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950). Citing the phenomenon he called creative destruction, again, we just have the painful process of new industries replacing old ones.

My sources and more: Thanks to the NYC Brian Lehrer show for an interview with A.J. Jacobs that inspired today’s post. From there, of course I went to the A.J. Jacobs piece in the NY Times.