Generative thinking…

I think and I worry about thinking vs. the “machines” generating thinking, often these days.  Yes, being retired, I have time on my hands HaHa!  Even though I made my career in the technology field, I feel things have gotten (past tense) out of hand.  

In my World War II History class at Metro State University of Denver, I found another who thinks the way I think.  Technology is not only getting ahead of mankind’s thinking abilities, but we are voluntarily contributing to the problem: 

Generative A.I. 

The outsourcing of analytical thinking and reasoning. 

Professor Andrew Muldoon 

Technologists would say they are simply trying to improve things, I suppose.  But then the “Department of Unintended Consequences” rears its head as described in Ian Leslie’s book Curious ©: 

Human memory is inefficient and unreliable in comparison to machine memory, but it's this very unpredictability that's the source of our creativity.  It makes connections we'd never consciously think of making, smashing together atoms that our conscious minds keep separate.  Digital databases cannot yet replicate the kind of serendipity that enables the unconscious human mind to make novel patterns and see powerful new analogies, of the kind that lead to our most creative break throughs.  The more we outsource our memories to Google, the less we are nourishing the wonderfully accidental creativity of our unconscious. 

“… The more we outsource… the less we nourish… our unconscious.”  

Human brain power, or lack thereof, has been criticized for generations – interestingly, only by other humans.  Smart humans perhaps, but I haven’t witnessed a machine do this math (yet): 

Five percent of the people think; ten percent of the people think they think; and the other eighty five percent would rather die than think. 

Thomas Edison 

It makes me wonder what other great thinkers of their time would think about the thinking that goes on in our time: 

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it. 

Henry Ford

Well, I think we’ll just have to wait and see if the machines turn out to be better thinkers than we humans.  Perhaps we Neo-Luddites will be proven wrong. 

GAP 

When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.