1. Talk about one thing you learned from each of the articles that you didn’t know before you read them.
If you already know all this, talk about where you learned it.
The Social Contract Is Breaking, and AI Is Holding the Hammer by Rohit Thakur was eye opening. I think one thing I came away with was thinking about the social contract of people contributing to labor and then society rewards them with income and stability. I always felt like there was no way that our society would let AI take over because of this contract, but I think we are seeing how that contract is being defaulted on by corporations. It seems like some people in our society can never stop trying to make money even when they have anything and everything that they could ever want. I’m 57 and AI Just Made Me Unemployable (But Not For The Reason You Think) by Jason Weiland made me think about ageism in a completely different way. I never made a link between AI and ageism. I knew that AI could create a barrier, but I never thought about companies initially using AI as a weapon against hiring more experienced people.
2. What do you think the main point was in each article? In other words, what do you think they were trying to get across? Did they succeed? Did they make their point well? What was missing?
I think the main point in “The Social Contract Is Breaking, and AI Is Holding the Hammer” by Rohit Thakur was that AI isn’t just changing our job markets, but it is actually changing the bedrock of our society. I do think that the author succeeded because of how I feel after reading it! I always thought about AI changing our job market, but I never really thought about how it could change the social contracts that most of us subscribe to. I think the main point of the other article was that AI is being used as a weapon to not hire older people. I this I had always assumed this would be because older people aren’t as tech savvy, but this article made me think about that in a different way.
3. Talk about these three things:
a. What did you learn about using AI that you might not have known? AI makes me feel replaceable! I am human and will make mistakes. I also don’t think it is possible for me to have knowledge about anything that a person asks me.
b. What did you think about the responses you received? Good, weird, helpful, annoying,
incorrect, or whatever. The results were fine and seemed to make sense, but I felt cheated. I didn’t learn anything because it did all of the work for me.
c. What was your emotional reaction to using this tool? I actually felt really guilty! It felt like I was cheating and that was difficult for me to wrap my head around.
d. Where do you think we are headed and how to we manage it? I think AI is headed towards world domination. Truly, I don’t think that mankind can handle the promise of cheap labor and making more money.
Yes! I definitely relate to that feeling of being replaceable. These articles honestly made me pretty scared for the future, because like you said, corporate greed is always going to move faster than any ethical concerns or attempts to protect workers. And I agree about using ChatGPT , it was nice to just feed everything in and let it do the work, but it’s hard to fully trust the results, which kind of proves the whole point of why this is so unsettling.
Yes, I can most definitely relate to your comments on the social contract. When is the profit margin enough? what is enough wealth accumulated? especially when we consider the gap between billionaire corporations and a junior level tech employee.
” It seems like some people in our society can never stop trying to make money even when they have anything and everything that they could ever want.” TRUTH RIGHT HERE! It is truly wild how people in this world just need to hoard more and more wealth, for what reason? I will never understand.
Hi Liz! I enjoyed reading your reflections, especially your point about ageism. The idea that companies could use AI as a way to push out older and more experienced workers is something I hadn’t connected until you mentioned it. I also agree that using AI tools can feel like cheating. It’s amazing that can it feed out answers in a matter of seconds; even so, it’s still important for users to do their own research. And it definitely brings up concerns around how easily it could be to replace actual workers.
I love your picture, it’s comical and scary at the same time. The point about AI and ageism was a great point and I did not think about the connection. It’s not a surprise as AI can be bias and have biases in other areas as well. I personally don’t have a problem with people chasing money or wanting more of it, especially if there’s more than enough inthe account. However, I have an issue whenever those who hold the “money bag” make strong suggestions and efforts to stop others from making additional money and wanting to cap salaries. There’s a problem with control and using money to control behavior, livelihood, education, and jobs. I agree that I thought of AI in the job market, however I am thinking more of the social, emotional, and mental affects and what’s next? Prevention, intervention, and interception of so many issues that will arise from AI taking over.
Hi, Great discussion, I also felt like I was cheated out of a learning experience using AI.
Liz,
You did a good job on the analysis of the articles, you just left a couple out. I would have loved to hear more about what you thought about each of them. That being said your discussions were well done.
In terms of what you learned about using AI, I would suggest you pause, lean into your discomfort about using the tool, and think about what you really got.I don’t know the prompts your used (questions you asked) so I don’t know how that influenced your responses. But trust me, AI makes mistakes, sometimes big ones. It also hallucinates, which is an interesting experience. The replacement isn’t that they know everything and you can’t. The replacement issue is often about speed.
In terms of the guilt and not learning anything, that is a typical response from novice users. There are many professors who are talking about teaching students to use AI to learn rather than to cheat. Kahn academy has an interesting program that allows students to use AI, but there are specific guardrails that force them to learn with it rather than cheat with it.
All of this doesn’t solve the other problems the articles raise. The reason I have you do this exercise was to give you exposure if you didn’t have any and talk about your use if you did. If we don’t play – if we aren’t engaged – we have no ability to affect the outcome.
Nice job.
Dr P