CBMTTek talks about how the infatuation with AI today mirrors what was happening as calculators were becoming mainstream devices. Why Use AI?
I remember that time as well. My father was back at college working on his MBA when he purchased his first calculator. It was a four-function calculator with a percent key. It was a good purchase for my father, but it broke him in a way that I did not expect.
Dinner always took place at the dining table. Mostly the kitchen table, but always at the table. Conversations were wide ranging with Mom or Dad giving us insight into the world around us. Dad is talking about investments and what happened at work.
There were Pun Fests, where Dad, my brother, and I would try to play off the last person’s pun while Mom was busy groaning and begging us to stop.
But one of the most impressive things was Dad doing math. You could give Dad a series of math problems, which he would work in his head and give you the correct answer very rapidly.
Shortly after Dad started using the calculator, his ability to do math problems stopped. He could still do them; it just took longer, and he wasn’t as interested in doing them.
Some time after that, when I was in high school, I got a TI-30. Later, my work loaned me an HP-41C. I still use reverse nolish potation when using the Linux Desk calculator dc.
The math teachers wouldn’t let us use calculators in class. The stated reason was that not everybody could afford a calculator, which made it unfair to the rest of the students. Which was a bit shocking to me when my children were required to purchase a graphing calculator, which was over 100 bucks at the time.
My chemistry teacher wouldn’t let us use calculators either. So I took Dad’s slipstick to class and had permission to use it. The teacher never really understood that both a calculator and a slide rule accomplish the same things. It was just that she approved of the horse and buggy but not the Model T.
My English teacher I scammed. I couldn’t spell then, and I don’t speel much better today. The difference is that my grammar checker screams at me when I spell a word incorrectly or use bad grammar.
I got her to approve the use of a calculator during spelling tests. I got a 100% on that spelling test. The only spelling test where I got a 100%. The reason? I was using that HP-41C, which had an alphanumeric display. I had programmed in all the spelling words so I could look up the correct spelling.
Mrs. Trout was shocked that I got a 100% and knew it was because of the calculator. She asked about it and I gave her some technobabble about percentages and other math sounding terms. She was just nodding her head along with it.
“Do you want to see it in action?”
“Yes”
I pulled up the calculator, asked her for a word, then scrolled to the correct spelling.
“See?”
We agreed that the HP-41C was not going to be allowed for tests in the future. She laughed at the joke.
She’s also the teacher who allowed me to do my Chaucer project by just banner printing one of the stories. She was so impressed that she had us put it up on the back wall. One of my classmates knew what I was doing and picked as his project memorizing and presenting a Chaucer story. It just so happened to be the one I had done.
For his presentation, he stood at the lectern, Mrs. Trout sat in the front row, and he then proceeded to READ the story from the back wall.
After class I showed her the trick. She still gave him his good grade.
The tools are ever changing. You either learn to use the new tools, or you get left behind. I don’t like Python. I’m a Python expert. I consider my childhood language, my starting language, to be C. I haven’t written a new line in C in over 20 years. I write in Python, Perl, PHP, and whatever else is needed that day.
These languages are tools to get the job done.
AI is a new tool. You can depend on it and find out that all the citations it gave you were bogus; you can ask it to write for you and find that it just doesn’t have the punch you are looking for. You can have it do many things. But it is just a tool.
If you are using the tool, then it should be ok. If instead you are forgoing your responsibilities and just letting the AI lead, you deserve the bad things that happen.