Month: August 2023

So, are you worried that the ongoing Hollywood writers and actors strike will affect your favorite TV programs in the fall?

Yeah, me neither.

Most of the new shows out there are agenda-driven tripe anyway. And it’s hard to feel empathy for the Hollywood crowd. I know the great majority of them are just aspiring folk struggling to make a living, but my admittedly stereotypical vision of them pictures a hedonistic culture full of excess, addiction and immorality.

There is one facet of the strike that does grab my attention. A key item among the demands is for limits and controls on the use of artificial intelligence, commonly known as AI. It’s been riveting to me to learn of how far the technology has come. I read, for example, that AI was used to make Harrison Ford look younger in the most recent Indiana Jones movie. In fact, the innovation is now capable of cloning an entire performer and assimilating his voice. Actors are legitimately concerned that they can, and ultimately will be replaced.

AI is equally a threat to the writers. Apparently, if you were to take all the existing scripts for a popular show, say Law and Order for instance, and feed them into the system, AI can learn how the show is written, and can create new scripts for new episodes without human help. The writers want assurances that TV producers will never let this happen.

I confess I am a bit puzzled about the union strategy. Seems to me the best way to make sure computers don’t take your job is to stay on the job and continue to do it well. Wouldn’t going on strike force your employer to use the very technology you are trying to squelch? Guess I don’t understand show biz.

Anyway, it’s their problem, right? AI is not a threat to you and me…..he wrote nervously.

In truth, most of us have little awareness of how much it already affects (controls?) our lives. Those ladies with the sultry voices inside our smart phones, Siri and Alexa, set alarms, look up information, and send text messages for us. Maybe you’re scrolling through your Facebook wall and come upon an ad for a Doobie Brothers concert coming to Oak Mountain Amphitheater. You click on it just out of curiosity to see what the tickets might cost. Then, as you resume scrolling, your newsfeed suddenly is cluttered with ads for concerts of all types. Somebody, or more accurately some thing, has tracked your activity.

You turn on your TV and the screen immediately suggests the shows it thinks you want to watch. It also customizes the commercials you will see. Automated customer service machines help you solve your tech problems without speaking to a human. Your smart phone activates by recognizing your face. You can watch live video of someone at your front door, even if you are a thousand miles from home. You can put it in control of your thermostat and refrigerator. You can use it to start your car when you are not in it. Soon it will drive the car.

All of this is super great, so long as we continue to be the ones deciding how to use it. But what if, one day, we get into our self-driving car and tell it to take us to the farmers market. It knows what sort of items you usually buy there, and has calculated you can get them cheaper at the grocery store, so it decides to take you there instead. “But I don’t want to go to the grocery store!” you shout to it. “I want to go to the farmers market!” No matter. The vehicle has already decided what is best for you, and off to Publix you go.

You turn on your TV and, on a whim, decide to watch the latest episode of The Bachelor, a show you haven’t watched in years. But your TV decides this is not a program that you have been interested in, and redirects you to a rerun of Andy Griffith. You scream at your television and hurl the remote across the living room, but Andy and Barney remain on the screen.

Sound like the stuff of a corny, old sci-fi movie? Maybe, but the technology already exists to do both of those things, and more. It also occurs to me that I could feed several of my past blogs into an AI computer, and the machine could start writing my columns without me. This won’t be hard for you to discern.

If my blogs suddenly become much more clever, insightful and smart, you’ll know I didn’t write them.

It finally happened. I knew it was just a matter of time, and I’ve been dreading it. I was shopping at one of Trussville’s big box stores and, after I had gathered my purchases, I strolled over to the checkout area searching for a cashier.

There were none.

There was only a bank of self-checkout machines, accompanied by a couple of watchful employees. So, we’ve finally gotten there. The time when checkers have been all but eliminated and we have to check ourselves out. I try not to be one of those people that hates change. But I don’t think I’m going to handle this well.

For starters, can we not standardize these these things so they all handle the same stuff? One machine takes cash only. One takes credit cards only. One takes cash and credit cards. One only takes cards from Southern Baptists. Another is for Capricorns.

Then there’s the search for the bar code. I’m convinced the packagers are entertaining themselves by deliberately trying to make them as hard to find as possible. Kind of like playing a game of Where’s Waldo. After rotating my can of paint for ten minutes in a futile attempt to find the code, I am rescued by the employee monitor, who seems annoyed at my incompetence. She points out the tiny code, which is located on the bottom of the back label, partially obscured by a sticker telling me this product is helping to save the environment. I’m not certain, but I could swear I saw the employee roll her eyes at me as she walked away.

The robotic female voice in the machine tells me to remove my items from the platform and bag them, unsympathetic to the fact the bags are too small to hold anything larger than a cantaloupe. “Take your receipt” she says. Glad to. Where is it? I have this uncanny ability to choose the machine that has run out of paper.

All the while I feel the heavy gaze of the monitors, watching me intently, the way a mother watches her toddler after telling him to stay away from the wet paint on the kitchen doorway. I have this fear of accidentally forgetting to scan one of my items, and immediately being led out of the store in handcuffs. You’re not paranoid if they really are out to get you.

I blame Piggly Wiggly. Back in the early 1900’s, when grocery stores and supermarkets began to proliferate, the customers would give their shopping lists to the clerk, who would then gather your groceries, and bring them to you. But around 1916, the first Piggly Wiggly opened in Memphis, Tennessee, pioneering a radically new concept. They let the customers actually roam the aisles by themselves, gather their own items, and bring them to the checkout. It was the genesis of a nefarious plot to make the customers do more of the work, while the employees do less, making them more expendable. The experiment was so successful that in 1937 the company introduced the next step, the shopping cart. Now, not only did you have to pick out your own stuff, but you had to tote it to your car and load it.

As you can see, it was inevitable that, ultimately, the process would become complete when the customer would also have to check himself out. And here we are.

It’s not a total revolution just yet. Most stores still keep a checker or two available so that you have the option. Folks who choose to do self-checkout usually do so because they don’t want to stand in line. They feel they are saving time by doing it themselves. Want to know a secret? Studies have shown that most shoppers who have multiple items don’t get out of the store any faster using self-checkout than they do by waiting it out in the cashier line. It just seems faster because you are busy doing something.

I’m going to miss the cashiers once they’re gone for good. That friendly lady asking me if I’m having a good day, or how I like that new brand of toothpaste, or offering me a choice between paper and plastic. I’ll miss placing that wooden divider stick on the moving belt, protecting me from paying for the broccoli the lady behind me tried to sneak into my items. Little did she know I hate broccoli. It won’t be the same without arm wrestling my cart away from the aggressive bag boy, who insists on pushing it to the car, desperate to look busy so that he doesn’t get laid off.

Alas, no matter. The self-checkout is here to stay. I expect I’ll get used to it. Guess I’ll see you at the store. I’ll be the one down on my hands and knees trying to find the slot where the receipt comes out.