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Sometimes I feel like I’m living in a “Jurassic Park” movie. If you’re thinking this is going to be a column about how much my kids are like dinosaurs you’re wrong (but that sounds both fun and accurate so I’ll have to revisit that at some later date).
No, I feel like I’m in a “Jurassic Park” movie in relation to the trajectory society is on with technology and artificial intelligence (AI). Remember how in the original “Jurassic Park” movies, Dr. Ian Malcom (Jeff Goldblum) keeps telling people that spawning dinosaurs and then bringing people into contact with them is the worst idea in the history of ideas? But everyone’s like, “nah, it’ll be fine.”
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Then lots of people get eaten by dinosaurs.
Especially in the second movie, Dr. Malcom, because he has seen firsthand what happens and has specific examples of dino disasters, keeps sounding the alarm that this is a dangerous undertaking that he wants no part of.
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We, too, have the benefit of past experiences with technology. We can look at the horrors of atomic bombs, the soul-eroding impact of life in big cities, the dehumanizing of people on social media, the spiritual decay of a screen-dependent culture. Iur relationship with technology is broken. Dysfunctional. Abusive.
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And yet, the Ingen representatives of our day say, “yeah, but this time it will be different.” I don’t want to get chased by the velociraptors of driverless cars. They laugh and say that’s not what’s going to happen. Probably.
Let’s create a disembodied intelligence that will facilitate every aspect of humanity without being human. What could go wrong? Remember in “Jurassic Park: Lost World” when the camera guy stole the Tyrannosaurus rex’s baby? He was doing it to save the injured dinosaur (something about good intentions here) but it resulted in the dad and mom T-Rex hunting down and eating humans.
That’s what I’d describe as a foreseeable consequence. But here’s the deal with AI and technology in general: though it has beneficial consequences that are foreseeable it also always has harmful consequences that are not. And the two are impossible to separate.
I’m basically plagiarizing philosopher and technology commenter Jacques Ellul here (well, not the stuff about dinosaurs). He wrote many books in the mid-20th century and insightfully pointed out that technology isn’t good or bad, or neutral. It’s ambivalent. You get good and bad effects with each technology that are inseparable and the tech doesn’t care. We’re good at seeing the good things in advance, but the bad stuff is not so easily seen before it’s a reality.
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The real issue though is that once a technology is introduced there’s no going back. Kind of like in “Jurassic Park.” Once you’ve got dinosaurs on the loose you always have dinosaurs on the loose.
Which brings me back to my role as Dr. Ian Malcolm in the 2025 version of “AI: The Future Lost World.” We’re unbelievably deep down the rabbit hole of living life through technology. Surely though, somewhere in our addled collective memory there are enough examples of how our technological society is harming mankind that this would give us pause when it comes to the final stage of technologizing man.
People are legitimately talking about combining man and machine like this is a desirable goal. And remember, once you become the Borg you’re always the Borg.
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Just like Dr. Malcolm, I’m saying all this for the sake of your kids (first movie) and my kids (second movie).
Children are already interacting with OpenAI and have become quite adept at using it for school work according to the report OpenAI Usage Plummets in the Summer, When Students Aren’t Cheating on Homework. Is this the outcome we anticipated?
Children are already turning to AI for help instead of their parents. But AI doesn’t give the same advice as parents. Instead it does this: Study says ChatGPT giving teens dangerous advice on drugs, alcohol and suicide, according to PBS News.
We haven’t lived with cell phones or the internet for long enough for us to truly know the impacts these technologies have had and are having on us. Yet we’re about to open the Pandora’s box of AI like we know it’s going to be a good thing.
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My favorite Dr. Malcom quote from “Jurassic Park” is, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
Now would be a great time to heed that wisdom.
Harris and his wife live in Pflugerville with their seven children. Please email comments or suggestions for future columns to thoughtsforcaleb@gmail.com.
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