Algorithms of loving grace

“Whether we are based on carbon or on silicon makes no difference; we should each be treated with appropriate respect.”

Arthur C. Clarke

I experienced a Black Mirror moment, recently. I was striding through the alleys of Pioneer Square and asked Siri a simple question she couldn't handle. I said something reprehensible in return—something I would never say to a human, something dismissive and crass.

There was a slight pause, then Siri said, "That's not very nice."

It messed me up for a minute; that simple voice prompt cracked through my shallow, generalized attention field into a deeper well of shared humanity.

The moment passed quickly as the immediacy of Seattle crashed in around me—tents lined up under the viaduct, machinery tearing up First Avenue, homeless people standing mutely in an orderly line outside the mission.

We're entering entirely new terrain, in terms of our interactions with the technology that shapes our life experience. And that landscape is being designed by people who may or may not care about our well-being.

It is incumbent upon each us—all of us—to be vigilant in this time of rapid change.

Now that our apps allow us to talk to them, expect us to talk to them, there is a premium on combining crack code with conversational prompts—a return to the primacy of the spoken word. This turn of events would please the ancients, Plato in particular, who feared the written word would supersede oral traditions dating back to the dawn of our kind.

So if conversation is increasingly king, when it comes to humans interacting with machines, will that change the way humans interact with humans? Perhaps it'll be the slow, inexorable drift toward a more action-oriented exchange. But, just as likely, it will enable us to be even more crass and prone to whimsy as we get used to talking exclusively to robots.

Our hardest hue to hold

Whether we end up meat batteries or players one, it's clear we've gone over the AI falls. But the skill Skynet will find most difficult to replace is our constant binary cycling through self-awareness and animal oblivion; machines can ponder but they can't surf the edge of sometimes I'm aware—but mostly I'm not. Which means they'll never have the delightfully individualized, chaotic quirks and inconsistencies those patterns create.

In other words: us.

So raise a glass to the gloriously ambivalent essence of humanity!

Let us pledge to be aware of what is happening in our immediate vicinity (more often).

Let us be present for our lives as they unfold.

Let us be kind and curious and breathe the air.