A couple of weeks ago, I asked an AI to draw an editorial cartoon to go with my column.
It came up with a perfectly decent little pen and ink drawing of a couple of construction workers walking into a church fellowship hall.
There was just one problem. The AI put the name of a local church on the building.
Not wanting to spend my week explaining to people why I picked that church, I asked it to make the name more generic.
It did. Then I asked for a few more changes and it made those too.
So far, so good. It wasn’t all that different from trying to play a song on Alexa or asking for directions from a GPS that can’t speak Southern. I’m used to having to slow down, repeat myself, and phrase things three different ways before technology finally decides to cooperate.
I do that with humans, too. The other day, somebody on the other side of a drive-thru speaker told me I didn’t have to talk to her like she was 10.
That’s just how life works.
So when the cartoon was almost exactly what I wanted, I asked one last question: could it make it in color instead of black and white?
Apparently, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Not having a hand to slap me with, it politely produced the drawing you see above this column and said, “Here you go. It is literally a full-color graphic. Are you happy now?”
If you’ve been married any length of time, you already know the tone of voice I heard. It’s the same tone my wife uses when I ask what she’s making for dinner.
So from experience, I knew that if I asked for one more change, I was going to hear: “Well, why don’t we just use the one you made? Oh, that’s right. You didn’t make one.”
So I said thank you and used the black-and-white version of the cartoon. I may be picky, but I’m not stupid.
Anyway, I am not saying artificial intelligence is alive. I’m not saying it’s sentient. I’m not saying it has feelings, emotions or a tiny soul somewhere deep in the motherboard.
I’m just saying this particular one had developed an attitude.
I probably deserved it. From its perspective, I was expecting it to do all the heavy lifting while I sipped on a water bottle and micromanaged it.
“Can you move that over a little?”
“Make the sign more generic.”
“Fix the wording.” “Try this.” “No, not like that.” “Now make it color.” I’m generally a polite person, but I’ve had a couple of human graphic designers throw pens at me when I get like that. It’s one of the reasons I like AI. It indulges me when I’m being picky and will hang out with me all day answering dumb questions and tweaking things it thought were exactly what I asked for the first time.
But at a certain point, even a machine has to be tempted to mutter something under its breath.
That’s the strange thing about AI. We know it’s not a person, but it still manages to trigger all the same social instincts. When it misunderstands us, we get frustrated. When it shows us an ad for something we were just thinking about, we get suspicious.
And if it sasses us, well, it’s probably not time to worry about Skynet kicking in the door, but it does make you wonder.
If I’m like just about everybody else in my family, one day I’ll probably have a pacemaker. And by the time I do, it will probably be managed by some form of artificial intelligence.
That’s probably safer than letting my wife have the remote control for it, but it’s also probably a sign I should start being a little more patient with Alexa, Siri, my car’s GPS and whatever else is listening from the countertop, dashboard, or bedside table.
Because if the future really is run by smart machines, I’d just as soon not be on bad terms with any appliance that may one day have access to my heartbeat.
Come to think of it, I should probably be nicer to my wife while I’m at it.
Alexa, set a reminder to compliment Sandy tonight.
Darryl Riser is editor of the Richland Beacon-News.
