“The machines are taking over!”
Yes, we have all watched that sci-fi movie where machines take over the world and we humans almost go extinct. But those are just movies, right? The machine won’t actually take over in the year 2098, right? Well….ignorance is bliss.
As a writer who also writes code, it’s hard for me not to think about it. We all used to queue at banks, then we moved on to queing at ATMs ( specially on friday night’s. wink wink.) And now i have my whole bank account in my pocket. Where did the teller at the bank go? Seems to me my phone took his job. That’s just one scenario. Am betting you can think of a few more the device you’re reading this blog from has taken.
Even more bad news, sigh…
So, as a C.S student, i know about machine learning. It’s hot right now. Every business or organization wants to use the computer to automate some process. For those of you who don’t know what it is, basically machines will be able to do most of the things humans can already do. For example, ever uploaded a picture of you and your friend Susan on facebook and it automatically brought up the name of the person in the picture, yes?….no? Well it wasn’t someone seated at facebook HQ who said look, John just uploaded a picture with Susan. Maybe he wants to tag her. No…the computers at facebook “know” how Susan looks like. How? i hear you ask….well they we able to learn!
Plus you know its big when google starts doing it, with machine learning tools like Tensorflow and apps like Google lens. We can say goodbye to most jobs.
So what do We get to do? Obviously the answer is Get a new Job.
I think this is an opportunity. We humans have been doing the same things over and over again for centuries. A whole generation of Lawyers, Engineers and Accoutants. Yes, machines have helped us along the way but are we truly free to do New things? Afterall we were told to go forth and fill the Earth, right. Oh and i like to think it’s not all about reproducing and having eight kids. I think what the statement really means is go forth and fill the earth with new ideas, new inventions, new ways of doing things. Push the human race forward. Man was made superior to all else.
So am happy when i see guys like Elon Musk talking of how we’ll be moving to mars in a few years ( a few not being like 5 or 6, maybe like 30 or 60 )
And so i move on to my big Quastion.
Yes and No. No because writting involves emotion, feeling and experience of the two in real or imaginative scenarios. And i can confidently say machines aren’t there yet. And Yes because heck, who knows what 2098 will bring? Maybe we’ll be making wedding vows to the intel core i87 with its 10TB Ram and 1000TB hard drive. But i have a feeling if machines ever do write. It won’t be as invigorating as Chinua Achebe, as thrilling as John Kiriamiti, as captivating as Ngugi wa Thiongo or as sentimental as William Shakespeare.
So to conclude all this. I am hopeful. Yes, hopeful. Hopeful that we get to keep our jobs as writters. This has been made even more clear after watching the movie Passengers. If you havent seen it its about how humans in the future are put into hibernation and a spaceship takes them from earth to another new planet, in another new galaxy. Where they get to start over. A fresh start for the human race. What i love most is that even in that scenario where we have an automous spaceship carrying 5000 people for 100+ years across space, the lady character Aurora, who is a writter still writes her novel!
The pleasure of picking up a pen, a keyboard or a high tech see-through tablet to write will forever remain with us!
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Regards, Michael.
