This is from Chris Harrison the content director at the Sydney Morning Herald. Some major problems with AI coupled with the squalid cesspool of social media.

Back when I was a journalism student and mobile phones were the size of a house brick, I attended the press conference of a technology symposium in Sydney. The big wigs of all the tech powerhouses were showcasing future wizardry, including smaller phones that could take photos, download music, and help people in pubs appear less lost while waiting for a date to return from the loo.

Somewhat courageously, given the setting, a fellow student raised her hand and asked: “What you’re describing seems unnecessary. What about giving us something we actually need?”

To which one CEO replied: “Um, we decide what you need.”

Thirty years later, what seemed radical then is run of the mill now. So too, it will be with artificial intelligence, which many of us still see as a choice but which will soon be choosing for us. As a matter of fact, it already is.

Is that what we need? Rather than ask a tech CEO, let’s ask a dear colleague of mine who last week was simply doing his job as a graphic designer (something AI is reportedly coming for) by supplying an illustration for a story about an alleged child murderer whose name had been read out under privilege in parliament. Shortly after publication, Google’s new artificial incompetence mode was serving up a summary naming my colleague as the alleged murderer. Its data miners had swept the photo credit and the victim’s name and had put two and two together to make 11.3175 recurring.

Lucky for my colleague, we have a direct line to Google and we got the high-tech equivalent of Liquid Paper over the error. But can you imagine if and when rogue tech incorrectly labels Joe or Josephine Blow a murderer or a rapist or a tax evader or a Wordle cheat or anything he or she is not and they can’t get anything done about it? Sadly, I don’t think you’ll have to imagine that for long.

My colleague is recovering OK. Thanks for asking. Google didn’t. You can’t stop “progress” and there are squillions to be made by nerdy execs who skipped the history class on humanism and who are rolling out this robot we’ll be told we need until we can’t live without.

What struck me most about the 2020 docudrama The Social Dilemma wasn’t the detrimental effects of social media – we knew that before we watched it – but the people who created, marketed and monetised it saying it’s banned in their house and they won’t let their kids near it.

Bit late, folks!

My wife is a university lecturer. As jobs disappear around her, AI is making her and her remaining colleagues’ lives a misery as they try to decipher what their students know and what cheat-tech can help them pretend they know.

My daughter, who is doing the HSC, is trying to pick a career that Open AI’s CEO Sam Altman doesn’t think bots can do better than she can. She’s stressed because she’s creative and wants to do the kind of work Altman claims isn’t “real work”. I’ve suggested she become an internet lawyer. Something tells me we’re gonna need lots of them.

I pray digital journalism is “real work” long enough for me to pay off the mega-mortgage that keeps me awake at night. It’s a rewarding career where we fact check before we publish and if we do incorrectly say an innocent graphic designer is a child-murderer, we are held to account.

My son wants to be a pilot, which I used to be before I realised I enjoyed writing about flying more than actually doing it. I worry for him, not because of the existing perceived dangers but because, to save money, some airlines are considering just one pilot in the cockpit.

Never mind that many modern aviation accidents are due to technology factoring the pilot out of the equation, such as the 2009 Air France disaster when 228 people were in their final moments while the pilots frantically tried to figure out what the hell their plane was doing. Man and machine were at odds with each other. They often are.

Rather than single-pilot cockpits, the challenge for airline manufacturers should be to re-embrace the human it sought to render redundant. And in many ways, that should be society’s challenge as well.

If you’ve read this far, you’re possibly thinking I’m a Luddite who should go plough a field with a horse. Nah, I’m just fed up with hearing everyone bemoan the scourge of social media on mental health and the jobs that will be lost to machines while thinking there’s nothing we can do about it.

Why do we put up with a path to a detrimental future being paved by people who won’t need to walk it? Why don’t we harness AI to fix old problems rather than create new ones? On my way home from work every night, I sit forlornly at red traffic lights on a main road while no cars go through the green light from the minor road. There’s something AI could surely set its sights on.

The only person I’ve heard speak highly of AI is my son, who used ChatGPT to generate a persuasive text trying to convince his dad to buy him an ebike. Unashamedly, he even sent me the prompts he used – his only input.

I didn’t need AI to help me craft my response, which was until he can persuade me himself, he ain’t getting one.