Don't worry about the quality of AI. Worry about the quantity.
What nuclear bears taught me
The other day we were all out enjoying the sun.
Well… some of us were enjoying the sun.
Others were enjoying the sun and not looking at our phones, which is similar but not quite the same.
But then a family friend landed us all in a terrible dilemma.
The conversation had turned to polar bears. And he claimed that they were heading south, mating with grizzly bears and making pizzly bears, which were terrifying American towns.
This friend is a lovely person but they’ve been known to be wrong before.
Everyone wanted to reach for their phones to Google it.
The whole atmosphere darkened.
Could we live with not knowing whether this was true?
It is hour 186 of phone free commuting.
The chief disadvantage of phone free commuting in high vis is that you look like a massive idiot. And if anyone asks you what you are doing it’s hard to know what to say. I looked at my phone during my daughter’s ballet recital. That was a few years ago. And then in trying to fix the problem I meditated a lot. And then I had this awakening experience. And now I’m wearing high vis.
There really aren’t the words.
That’s the downside.
The upside is I have rare, total clarity on the phone question. No matter what’s going on, I never use it. It’s my totally protected mental rest time.
Otherwise I’d be lured in by all sorts of positive uses. Because the trouble with the phone is that there’s always a good reason.
And the most positive use of the phone is to seek wisdom.
Sir Isaac Newton said he only saw so far because he stood on the shoulders of giants. And we who have phones can stand on so many giants.
As I commute my mind thirsts after knowledge.
Was Ben Stiller in Marley And Me, as my wife claims? I am pretty convinced he was not, but I could verify it now.
No, says the high vis vest. Later.
It was bad enough in the days of Google. But now the siren call of wisdom is even louder.
Much has been written about AI, its ethics and its accuracy. For me, one of the most interesting effects is to hugely expand the number of questions one could conceivably answer by checking the phone.
Recently we were on holiday in the Lake District. We were planning to climb Scafell Pike. The night before, on a whim, I told AI we were doing that. It advised me to leave early, getting to the car parks at 9am at the latest, because they filled up. This had not occurred to us.
We followed its advice. And took the last parking spot. As we walked past people forlornly searching for parking on a single lane road designed for old narrow cars and not wide Teslas, the thought occurred that these were people who had not shared their plans with AI.
For me, the surface area of life that was checkable was expanded enormously in an instant. I could tell AI all of my upcoming plans!
There’s so much out there about AI being wrong. But let’s face it… it’s not wrong that often.
And when did knowing more become a bad thing?
I believe that things picked up from the world of meditation can help us greatly in managing the harm from the phone.
I believe we should learn to be bored again. If that’s your earnest desire too, read my essays about my meditative experience here, here, here and here.
Over the hundreds of hours I tried many different forms of meditation, with different techniques and focuses. So much advice.
If there was one unifying instruction, one thing you could always do no matter what stage of meditation you were at, it was to accept. Having a bad day, mind wandering all over the place? Accept it. Feeling really low? Accept it. Fidgeting? Accept it.
This worked in the earliest stages, when I was overcome by itches. The answer wasn’t to scratch them, but to accept that you are itchy. You just watched the itchy feeling and accepted it was there. And soon enough, that stage passed.
And it worked in the moment where it all ended, standing in front of a mirror.
Honestly, across hundreds of hours, it was probably the best way of describing the whole thing. I came to imagine meditation to be training for the acceptance muscle. “Ah well, it’s okay” reps.
By weird coincidence, phone use pulls us in the other direction.
Don’t accept you don’t know, says the phone. You CAN have certainty on this. Quick - check and check again. And now, with AI, check even more things.
So maybe it’s not the quality that’s the issue with AI, maybe it’s the quantity.
Because with each check, the opposite of acceptance - unease - is reinforced until it’s inflamed. And soon enough I feel uneasy about everything.
It’s like scratching a mosquito bite.
I’m not saying that we need to never check anything. Sometimes we need to know what happened to Theo Walcott.
But there might be value in those moments when we grit our teeth and practise accepting we don’t know.
Back with our friends.
The bear conversation continued.
Everyone had resisted. No one had looked up the pizzly bear. But then someone else suggested that the area around Chernobyl was populated with fur-less nuclear bears, who were ravenous and attacked at night.
It was one bear claim too many. Everyone had to look it up.
The calm of the afternoon was lost.
But at least we knew.
Thanks for reading! This is part a series of articles following 1,000 hours of doing nothing - here’s the very strange story of how it all began.
If you know someone who’s tired of their phone use (or if you know someone whose phone use you are tired of) feel free to share the joy of Phone Free Will.
First, you are a great writer! You are able to create an atmosphere, it felt like we were with you on that day in the Lake District. Second, you are right - again!! I check AI for basically every thing: should I take an umbrella, will the train be late, ... It increases anxiety and as you wrote, it makes you feel like you are in control, when in fact you never are. I still worry about AI in general though lol. But the quantity is the first issue to adress, you are right. By the way, I love the Lake District!! I really want to go there soon!