AI Will Be A-OK

The American left defines itself by what it’s against.

Don’t knock it. Being against Donald Trump has been a godsend. There’s no need to deal with its own deep unpopularity, to abandon any of its eccentric causes or to develop any kind of sensible, centrist agenda for positive change. Just not be Trump. It works!

The latest thing the left is against is artificial intelligence and, more specifically, data centers. Bernie Sanders has proposed a national moratorium on data centers and, locally, Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway has proposed the same — never mind that there are several of these things already here and nobody has even noticed.

Both Sanders and Rhodes-Conway make essentially the same argument: technology and the market must slow way down and move at the speed of government. Sanders says that “democracy” needs time to “catch up,” while Rhodes-Conway claims that city zoning needs time to adapt. You can bet that, if either one succeeds, their proposed moratorium will be extended ad infinitum.

Now, there are some reasons for legitimate concern. Big data centers, which are being built or proposed all over the country, demand a lot of resources. They take up a lot of land, water, and especially energy. Utility costs, especially in Wisconsin, are already a concern and these things will almost certainly make prices higher in the short-term.

But it’s foolish to try to stand in the way of this technology. AI is here and it’s growing rapidly. It has some unknowns and some potential downsides — which the left is obsessing over — and a lot of very substantial upsides — which the left is ignoring.

The left focusses on the downsides because the jobs that might be threatened or changed are mostly held by liberals — people who work on screens or with ideas. The left is not particularly concerned about another burgeoning technology — self-driving vehicles — because that only impacts truck drivers and they don’t generally have college degrees. Too bad for them. They should have gone to Harvard.

This is much like the divide over illegal immigration. The left is fine with it because it doesn’t threaten them. If those were comparative literature professors streaming across the border they’d have a different view.

As for the upsides, well, I asked Google, and of course, Google generated an answer from AI. Here’s what it said:

“Healthcare & Medicine

• Diagnostics: Analyzing medical images (X-rays, MRIs) to detect diseases like cancer earlier and more accurately.
• Drug Discovery: Identifying patterns in vast datasets to accelerate finding new treatments.
• Personalized Medicine: Tailoring treatments based on individual genetic data. 

Business & Finance

• Automation: Handling repetitive tasks, automating reports, and managing inventory.
• Analytics: Processing big data for market trends, customer behavior, and predictive maintenance.
• Cybersecurity: Detecting threats, anomalies, and responding to breaches in real-time.
• HR: Skill-matching resumes, automating candidate communication. 

Transportation & Logistics

• Autonomous Vehicles: Self-driving cars, drones, and robotic warehouse management.
• Traffic Management: Optimizing flow, reducing congestion.
• Supply Chain: Predicting demand, optimizing routes, and reducing waste. 

Creative & Content

• Content Generation: Creating marketing copy, code, music, and images.
• Video Editing: Automating tasks in media production. 

Public Sector & Environment

• Disaster Response: Predicting and mitigating climate impacts, early warning systems.
• Agriculture: Monitoring crop health, optimizing yields, pest detection.
• Public Safety: Assisting in crime solving, enhancing security. 

Everyday Life

• Digital Assistants: Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant.
• Personalization: Product recommendations on shopping sites, personalized news feeds.
• Education: Personalized learning, tutoring.”

As a writer, I use AI a lot now. In fact, it’s hard to avoid it. It’s an easy and fast way to group data points and help me make an argument. Now and then it generates an answer that is clearly false or suspicious and then I need to track down the errors. And, sure, when I’m researching a field that I know little about there’s a chance that I won’t detect some mistake. In that case I probably have enough readers with wide enough experience to catch the problem.

But even as a writer — an occupation that sees itself threatened by AI — I see it as a big net advantage. AI makes me a better writer. It’s an assistant, not a replacement or a boss.

Luddites have always claimed that the latest technology means the end of life as we know it. And, in fact, most technology does come with a downside. Fossil fuels caused climate change and now we’ve got to deal with that, but I wouldn’t want to live in a world before fossil fuels were burned. Smart phones, tablets and the internet have resulted in shorter attention spans and a fractured media landscape in which we can retreat to our own worlds, but I wouldn’t want to go back to a time in which the IBM Selectric was the last word in word processing. Jet travel and airline deregulation have combined to create a hectic and largely unpleasant air travel experience that contributes to climate change to boot. But I’ll take it as long as I can get to see my relatives in California in four hours.

My point is that any major technological advance comes with tradeoffs, but the upsides almost always far outweigh the downsides. The trouble is that it’s human nature to quickly start taking the advantages as a given, while focussing on the costs.

AI and its supporting data centers are no different. Sure, there are downsides. But we’re not going to stop AI, nor should we. In fact, moratoriums are like spitting on a railroad track. Better to have a national policy that overrides a patchwork of state and local laws. So, let’s figure out how best to make it work for us and stop trying to stop the unstoppable.