From the Editor’s Desk: Slop ⭐

AI deniers and critics have latched onto the term “AI slop” for obvious reasons, but human error is a far more serious problem, one that has led to countless disasters and untold loss of life. If you want to remove “slop” from the world, then the goal should be to automate everything with technology. And that technology will most certainly utilize AI.

Some of the best (worst?) examples of human error include the sinking of the Titanic, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and the Exxon Valdez oil spill. But human error leads to disaster literally every single day in the form of automobile crashes. It is by far the biggest factor in airplane disasters and maritime accidents. And it plays a significant role in medical procedural errors too. How many sporting events have been decided by a missed call from some human referee or umpire?

Too many, and that’s why each sport is increasing the use of video reviews. But let’s keep this to technology.

From the CrowdStrike disaster to almost every single Microsoft security incident we’ve seen, it usually comes down to one thing, human error. And if you factor in indirect human error, as in the coder who wrote the buggy software that failed, as we should, then it’s even worse. Inserting a person into the chain of decision making is arguably one of the biggest mistakes one can make.

And yet, that is what we’re calling for with AI. It’s like the feeblest person in the room demanding to make decisions for everyone else.

We need to let go.

I have been a car enthusiast for my entire life, and I stuck diligently to small, manual-shift vehicles for as long as I could despite the obvious downsides. I still believe that I’m a better driver than virtually everyone I encounter on the roads, especially here in Pennsylvania. But with our streets and highways now crowded with traffic at all hours, it’s pretty clear that no combination of laws, enforcement, and collective driving skill will ever solve this mess. What will solve it, of course, are autonomous vehicles. Which is precisely what an enthusiast like me would resist. Sometimes it’s difficult admitting that you’re part of the problem. We’re so human.

To head off the obvious counterpoints, yes, AI still has a way to go. I’m not sure that anyone watching the first Wright brothers flight could or would have foreseen prop airplanes, jets, or spaceships, but they certainly would have gazed in wonder at a thing that they had previously thought to be impossible. Today, you don’t need much of an imagination to see how AI will transform our lives. In some ways, you need more of an imagination to claim that it won’t.

No matter. Despite ongoing improvements, AI will still make mistakes, it’s inevitable. As we rely on it more in ever more critical ways, lives will be lost. And each time this happens, the deniers and critics will explode like cockroaches from under the wood pile and complain bitterly that this is exactly why they oppose this change. Which is exactly what they said when a cloud service went down temporarily 10 years ago. You could probably trace these complaints back across each technology era until we get to the point where someone will argue for using paper-based interoffice memos again. It would be delivered by a human because, wait for it, that’s a job that would otherwise be lost to technology.

Ah yes, job loss. If there’s a more common argument against AI than slop, it’s job loss. But has anyone actually lost a job to AI? And if so, what was that job? I don’t have to look too far to see all kinds of jobs we’d be better off not having. Please don’t misunderstand. I’m not insensitive to this issue, but I am insensitive to holding onto things that do not make sense and maybe never did.

We need to let go.

Years ago, my wife and I were staying overnight at her parent’s house and I realized I had forgotten to bring my toothbrush. So that night I drove over to the local supermarket, which was this huge, empty, well-lit place, and I never saw another human being the entire time I was in there. I found a toothbrush, brought it up to the registers, saw no one, and then did a self check-out for the first time. It went poorly, and had someone popped up to offer their help, I would have accepted it. But I finally figured it out and left, vaguely upset with myself that I had struggled with this now-common activity.

Which is the point. If you had asked me then, right then, whether we should be replacing human cashiers with self check-out systems, I would have responded very strongly in the negative. But now I prefer to do this myself, to get out of these places as quickly as possible, and move on. Oftentimes, change needs to occur before we can look back and see the upside.

Change doesn’t happen overnight. I was a bank teller in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and we were often pretty busy despite the introduction of automated teller machines (ATMs) in the 1960s. Looking back on this now, it’s clear that most of the people I interacted with then were either older and set in their ways, or were people who got paid with a paper check and had to go to the issuing bank to cash it. And those people are all gone, for the most part: The older, change-averse people passed away and almost no one even uses paper-based checks anymore. Everyone takes Venmo, Zelle, Apple Cash or whatever else. Just this past weekend, we donated to a homeless fund and bought peanut butter at a farmer’s market using these types of electronic payments. 20 years ago, we would have written checks or paid with cash.

If those worried about jobs had their way, we’d all still be standing in line every Friday, paper checks in hand, waiting for some slow-moving bank teller to finish chatting with whatever customer so we could get our money and then go stand in line somewhere else waiting to get lunch. And if that sounds ludicrous to you, then explain why we’re suddenly defending other jobs that in 10, 20, or 30 years will seem as old-timey and disconnected from reality as being a stagecoach driver or a cobbler.

My current job has changed so much in the past 30+ years that it’s almost unrecognizable. But there’s been good with the bad, and the worst part of still working in this industry, such as it is, is that I compete with people who can’t write well and don’t offer any particular insights. Almost every single morning, I rattle off bad headlines to my wife, also a writer, and bemoan the state of this world. When is AI going to take their jobs away? I can’t wait.

Some are worried about an AI apocalypse. There’s a greater chance of an AI renaissance that frees us from drudgery that future generations will never experience. But if there is an apocalypse looming, you can be sure of one thing. It will be caused by humans, not technology. Because making mistakes is what we do.