Category: Uncategorized

No, A.I. Robots Don’t Herald the End of the Human Race.

Are we all going to be replaced by robots?

When discussing the possibility of a dystopian future where humans are subject to synthetic overlords, we have to remember something about robots and A.I.: They are dumb. Really, really dumb.

The question is rather broad. Will humanity in general be replaced by robots? Or perhaps all workers are going to have their jobs replaced by thinking machines? I personally doubt either will happen.

The question is one that mankind has brooded over for several decades now. It prompts feelings of existential dread that are quite fashionable at the moment, and pop media has taught us that robots exist for no other reason than to take over the world and to exterminate/enslave/assimilate the human race. But no, no, I don’t think it’s going to happen.

Sure, A.I. appears extremely intelligent, able to perform tasks and calculations faster than the human mind, but it is input-output. Garbage in, garbage out. A.I. doesn’t possess the capacity for intuition and introspective learning that humans do.

Robots may be stronger and more resilient than humans, but they are machines. Machines wear out and break down, faster than human bodies, in fact, and need to be fixed regularly. Can an A.I. driven system do that? Probably. But what happens when that system itself glitches out? Who repairs the repairer?

The fear is nothing new. Laborers of the Industrial Revolution feared that mills and machines would replace the need for them entirely. Then came computers, and if anything, they need even more careful attention to work properly. A.I. is the next in a long line of newfangled technological innovations that freak people out because they’re new and nobody knows their full capabilities yet. So, people think, “Hey, maybe this time we really will be replaced!”

Again, pop media has conditioned us to expect as much.

People are still needed to operate technology. Technology is dimwitted. It can’t react to sudden surprises. It needs a human touch to function correctly. In fact, the more we rely on technology, the busier we become in managing it. Automation breaks down the moment a single step falls out of place.

A.I. can think fast, act fast and evolve fast, but it can’t adapt to the weirdness of real life like humans can. A.I. and robots both need people to continue working, not the other way around.

As for the big companies who are jamming A.I. into everything they can? They are in the honeymoon phase when it comes to A.I. and its applications. The possibilities seem endless! But the giddy pipe dreams will end, and stern reality will reassert itself. Executives will grow bored and move on to the next big thing. A.I. will become a fact of life, along with interesting new types of robots, and like the once-strange technologies of the steam engine, the computer and the automatically flushing toilet, it will fade into the mundanity of everyday life.

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Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

“Hermes is not having the best time. He walks a fine line, and his duty as messenger of Olympus weighs heavily on him. Being a god in the modern age means living in a world that no longer believes in gods. How much can one deity accomplish when no one respects him anymore? And why do his instincts tell him that he, the son of Zeus, is losing favor with his own family?

Tensions abound. The upstart Young Gods play dangerous games using entire cities as their boards. Formless monsters strike from the nighttime shadows, terrorizing hapless mortals. Agents of rival pantheons scheme to thwart Olympus’ designs. In the thick of it all, Hermes does what he does best: trick, lie, and cheat his way to victory.“

Dealing With a Flooded Bathroom and Interrupted Plans

I start out every week with a plan. I map out the days and what I’ll do on each of them. I have everything laid out in my mind, all stacked up like alphabet blocks in neat rows and columns. And for months and months, everything goes according to the plan.

Oh, sure, there’s a hiccup here and there, but it’s always controllable, negligible, minor enough for me to fall into the illusion that I’m in control.

And then I get home from shopping after work one day and find a strange man at my door. And I ask him who he is, and he tells me that he’s a handyman sent from my apartment’s landlord to investigate a leak dripping into the carport.

And so we both walk in. I smell the water right away. Enough water to cover my bathroom floor an inch deep. And more than enough to flow over the threshold and make a nice, mushy bog of the carpeting beyond.

And my expectations of the afternoon are out the window. Happy Monday, presumptuous sucker.

He sucks up the water with a wet-vac. Then he leaves a dinky fan to dry out the carpet overnight … and all next day, as the case happens to be. I have a fan of my own, and I add its might to the air flow.

And so my plans are disrupted by an adventure I didn’t want. And I didn’t go in to work today, but instead worked from home because I needed to wash and dry the rugs soaked by the flood and expected that the handyman returns during the day to reclaim his fan. Which he didn’t. Because our plans aren’t always someone else’s plans, either.

But at least we all got a blog post out of it, didn’t we?

***

Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

“Hermes is not having the best time. He walks a fine line, and his duty as messenger of Olympus weighs heavily on him. Being a god in the modern age means living in a world that no longer believes in gods. How much can one deity accomplish when no one respects him anymore? And why do his instincts tell him that he, the son of Zeus, is losing favor with his own family?

Tensions abound. The upstart Young Gods play dangerous games using entire cities as their boards. Formless monsters strike from the nighttime shadows, terrorizing hapless mortals. Agents of rival pantheons scheme to thwart Olympus’ designs. In the thick of it all, Hermes does what he does best: trick, lie, and cheat his way to victory.“

The Sound of Inspiration

What would your life be like without music?

A life without music would be dull, that’s easy enough to say. But for me, it would also be a great deal more difficult to write anything noteworthy.

It is my belief that music is the purest expression of emotions and feelings available to humankind, just as written words are the purest expression of structured ideas. How do we describe good music? Moving, exciting, stirring, heartbreaking, uplifting, thrilling, contemplative. Music makes us feel. Words can, too, of course, but where a written story might give us a good shove now and then, music slaps us in the face – in a good way. Take any scene from a movie or stage play and remove the music. What do you have left? A bunch of people yelling and prancing around, usually. But add the music, and your heart beats to a gallop, or sinks in defeat or halts in anticipation. You no longer see something silly, but an experience of deep sincerity.

So what does this have to do with my writing? Simple. I listen to music for inspiration. Lots of people do, and I’m one of them. If you’re a writer and haven’t tried music as a way to come up with new ideas and work through the details of current ones, then I highly recommend it. Music stirs up emotions into a bubbling well, and from that well I draw my inspiration to fuel my projects.

I suppose that music and words go hand in hand. Two different forms of passion that perfectly compliment each other.

Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

Fluff is Good. We Need More Fluff.

Ever heard of a film called Sullivan’s Travels? It’s about a movie director who made his fame by making lighthearted comedies. He’s grown discontent with his reputation, and decides to strike out and make a serious picture, one that addresses the ills of society. The plan … goes wrong, to say the least (no spoilers!). In the end, though, he learns a moral: Lighthearted fiction has its place in the world and is more valuable than we give it credit for.

How many writers set out to craft the Great American Novel? Or to join the ranks of great authors of the world like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ayn Rand, George Orwell, Jonathan Swift, Victor Hugo, Nikos Kazantzakis, James Joyce, and Leo Tolstoy? It’s a tall order. It’s a tremendous challenge. Some may succeed. You who are reading this very blog may someday have your name counted among the giants of literature. Or you may not. Some of us choose not to, some of us don’t have the time or inclination to put in the effort, and some of us simply don’t have the skill.

And that isn’t a bad thing.

Veronica Lake and Joel McCrea in Sullivan’s Travels

I don’t know, maybe it’s the universities nowadays. There’s tremendous pressure on students to go out into the world and change it. To start something big, to borrow my alma mater’s motto. An expectation, maybe even a demand, to create, accomplish, or otherwise affect something socially significant. Why? I don’t know. It’s college, they have to justify that education somehow.

And so, you earn that Creative Writing degree, or Literary History, perhaps, or Communication (a very fine and sensible degree, don’t let anyone tell you different). You go out into the real world and find out that society is a lot more complicated than they told you about in school, and – shock and horror! – a lot of people aren’t as worried about the Profound Truths and Hard-hitting Social Commentary you want to write about as they are paying the bills, staying fit and healthy, keeping down a good job, and generally trying to get through life with their sanity intact.

Ever notice how a lot of great novels are rather grim? A lot of hard facts about life, a lot of stoic resolve to endure the unendurable, a lot of depressing defeats and protagonists being ground into the dirt. A glint of hope, perhaps, but mostly just acknowledging and analyzing how horrible the world can be. And it’s true. Life is a bully. But guess what? Everyone already knows that!

I do not demean the accomplishments of famous authors. They are famous because of their genuine skill and vision. But if I had to read works like 1984 and Crime and Punishment every time I settled down for the evening, I’d be a paranoid, depressed mess. We need fluff. We need lightness and joy and hope. The fluffy works, the pulp fiction, the genre pieces, and those weird novels you find tucked away in mysterious bookstores downtown. We need them. And we need authors to write them. They have value, because I firmly believe that all literature has value, regardless of its form or origin. John Carter of Mars and Conan the Barbarian are just as important as Zorba the Greek and The Grapes of Wrath

Am I biased? Well, I had to read Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby like three times in high school and watch the 1974 film adaptation starring Robert Redford. I was fed too much great literature and got queasy.

So, if you’re an author who feels frustrated that you can’t write “serious” work or don’t have the talent to create something “meaningful” and “socially significant,” consider that your talents may lie elsewhere. That your skills may not be suited to a deep analysis of the human condition, but might be perfect for a romping adventure or mystery thriller. Not everything has to have a deeper meaning. And who’s to say that a genre piece won’t touch someone in ways none of us can ever know? A little escapism is a good thing.

So, don’t worry about writing something great. Just focus on something good. Most of all, write what you enjoy.

Did you like what you just read? Are you a writer, or just looking for fun content? Do you want more, but are worried about missing new posts? Please subscribe! I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

It hasn’t gone anywhere, and it won’t anytime soon! My first book, A God Walks Up to the Bar, is available on Amazon.com. Witness the modern day adventures of the Greek god Hermes in a world much like our own – plus with demigods, vampires, nymphs, ogres, and magic. The myths of old never went away, they just moved on with the times. It’s a tough job, being a god!

Image Source: “Dandelion” by Kim Siever; Public Domain Mark 1.0.

Update on Book Publication Date

Hello, all,

As some of you may have already noticed, my book, A God Walks Up to the Bar, is not up for sale on Amazon.com yet. I deeply, deeply apologize that it is not yet available, especially after the hype I built up.

I’m encountering some technical issues with posting my book that I hope will be resolved ASAP. By the latest, I estimate that it will up by August 14th. Of course, when it IS available for purchase, I’ll be sure to let you all know.

Thanks for your patience, and please look forward to it!