An article I read this morning has me pondering. How is AI going to change my life and the lives of my working age children? I could ask AI, but I’d like to hear from you, a real human.
I remember showing my grandparents my first computer, the 1984 Macintosh with no hard drive. As clunky as that “portable” Mac was compared with the Windows 11 laptop I now use, it positively revolutionized my dissertation writing process. It also set weird artificial limits on my chapter lengths; only a certain number of words could be saved onto a disk that had to be popped out for input from a separate system disk every few minutes.
Back then, my grandparents, then in their mid-80s, still used a manual typewriter. As my grandmother watched me operate my Mac, I saw a longing in her eye. “Want to try it, Grandma?” “If only I was 20 years younger,” she said. The computer age had come too late for her.
I think about how my dad worked hard to keep up with technological advances until, in his 90s, he no longer could. Well, truth be told, he was always extremely dependent on his kids and grandkids to keep his computer operating – but I give him credit for trying.
The pace of change changes fast in our world. According to Matt Shumer, we’ve only just begun revving up this pace when it comes to artificial intelligence.
I love writing. I don’t want AI to help me write. My heart sings for joy when I wordsmith. I get irritated when my computer tries to insert words for me. Yet I suppose AI might be useful with researching – already I’ve grown accustomed to the way Google offers me internet sources when I pose a query. Now, if AI can help me make money off my writing, I’m all in.
But I’m not ready to go full blown on AI. Those Google-generated answers? I independently verify all but the most common bits of information. AI doesn’t parse through the true and the fake, so it helps to know enough to be able to evaluate whether or not AI is on the mark. What AI does help with is pointing me toward usable sources – usually.
Shumer says the AI revolution is not coming soon; it is already here. Not years from now, but within the next few months, socially disruptive changes will come to our jobs and workplaces. As I read what he has to say, my mind ponders two questions.
- How will this affect those less able to make major changes in marketable skills?
Shumer tells us all to get ready for the changes. Seize the opportunity right now to gain AI skills and market them. This revolution will affect both what we used to call blue collar and white collar jobs, so everyone will be impacted. But what about people who are struggling to keep up with technological advances as it is?
My father-in-law rose from sweeping Boeing’s floors straight out of high school to being plant manager before accepting early retirement in his mid-50s. His retirement occurred in the early ‘90s. By then, two trends at Boeing had caught up with him.
One, they were hiring managers with college degrees who’d never been on the company floor, and he’d never been to college. Two, his job increasingly required computer skills he lacked. There was no way training could bring him up to speed with the younger folks entering the workforce.
In the early 70s, I left for college just as a sea wave of change began breaking over my hometown. It was not a pretty sight. In a few short years, thousands of workers were laid off in the glass manufacturing industry that served as the lifeblood of our community.
As those jobs moved overseas, sustaining work disappeared and the area never fully recovered. Most workers found lower paying employment in retail. A few got better pay as prison guards in the new prisons which were the state’s solution to our town’s economic woes. Acres and acres of huge manufacturing buildings that once dominated the landscape were demolished and the land remains vacant to this day.
Sure, many people will find a way to retool in the new AI economy. They’ll heed Shumer’s advice and shift gears. But others will be too late or too old or too limited in abilities to master the new world. What happens to them? As an ethicist, my question is, What obligation do we have as a society to make sure no one is left behind?
2. How will this AI revolution affect those who pastor our churches, who provide social work assistance to those in need, who teach our kids?
I assume we’ll always need churches, the poor will always be with us, and we’ll always have little kids to teach. But Shumer says job enhancement and job change are coming to every field of work. Does this include churches and nonprofits and children’s classes?
I can see pastors being aided by AI for research and for keeping track of a small church’s finances. But I don’t want to listen to an AI-written sermon or watch an animated figure preach to me on a screen up front. I don’t even like attending church where a real live preacher is digitally beamed in from elsewhere Star Trek-like, let alone listen to an AI-generated talking head.
I attend a decent-sized church with multiple staff. Is Shumer telling me AI can take over counselling, leadership training, volunteer organizing, and pastoral care? Enhancement, perhaps. Replacement, no.
Until recently, I ran a mid-sized nonprofit that provided direct services to people in need. I saw how improved technology enhanced the work of my colleagues. But no robot could ever replace the smile of a human staff member or volunteer handing food to a mother in desperate need. Ditto the social workers serving newly arrived refugees or case workers finding housing for teenagers living on the street.
Two members of my family teach pre-K kids. One of those, my wife, is retiring shortly. AI might be able to help her come up with a science project for 4-year-olds, but could AI replace her or her assistant running the classroom or answering the students’ endless – and sometimes confusing – questions? And is human-replacing AI what we really want for our kids?
Over the past couple of centuries, technology has dramatically reshaped the world. Each new wave of technology has thrown people out of work and caused untold suffering. Yet an argument can be made that the world as a whole is in far better shape economically as a result of these technological advances.
Technology, whatever form it takes, is what we call “amoral,” meaning it is neither good nor evil in and of itself. It is all about how the technology is used. Unfortunately, technology has a track record of advancing faster than our ethical understanding can keep up with it.
I’ve just started writing a book on how leaders in the 21st century can process ethical decisions using age-old wisdom. I’m basing the book on lessons I learned back when I still had a manual typewriter. My grad school notes may be old, the wisdom far older, but I find them very up to date.
Those notes contain insights on the ethical challenges we were facing with technological advances back in the relatively primitive 1970s. Surprisingly, the same questions my professor posed of new technologies back then still apply to the brave new world of AI, a world he could only have envisioned via science fiction.
By the time I finish my book, Shumer’s AI revolution will have already hit us full force. I think about that as I write. Will what I am writing now still be useful to my grandkids living in a world I can only imagine through science fiction?
Which brings me back to you. What do you think. I’d love your very human input.
- What kind of work do you do? How do you think AI will change the way you work?
- Do you think you could lose your job? How are you planning to adjust?
- How do you think AI could help churches, social work, and school teachers?
- How might AI hurt churches, social work, and school teachers?
- Are you worried people you know will be impacted? If so, how?
- What should we do to make sure no one is left behind?
- What other concerns do you have about changes AI might bring?
I’d love to know your responses to any of these questions. You can write me by going to Contact Us! or emailing me directly at howard@howardkenyon.com. I look forward to hearing from you.
This post was entirely written by a real human.
And to read Matt Shumer’s article: Something Big Is Happening — matt shumer
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