Back to a Future

Now here’s a challenge for these blogs’ wordsmith readers. What is the term for someone who recognises and understands the future, but doesn’t want to participate fully in that future? I’ve struggled to find the appropriate word or phrase. The closest I have come across is the adjective ‘improvident’. This doesn’t quite capture my thinking. Improvident implies an element of recklessness and lacking foresight.

I was set on this quest, after reading a couple of stories last week. The first story was one to be found in the Health Service Journal. Not my favourite read for sure, and I refuse to pay to gain access to many of the paywalled stories. It was the article’s title that caught my eye: ‘The NHS must invest in AI before more doctors and nurses’. It is an even-handed story that posits that while the numbers of doctors and nurses have risen, NHS performance and patient satisfaction have dramatically fallen. It highlights the negative impact of developing specialist medical interventions and the focusing of resources to support these, likewise, and possibly related, the effects of failing to invest in capital projects and new technologies, particularly, artificial intelligence (AI).   

It was at this point that my thoughts began to drift to a future in which I, perhaps, didn’t want to be a part. Clearly, AI will play an important part in the development and delivery of future health care services. And rightly so. Everything from diagnostics, population-needs prediction and even routine administrative tasks have been shown to be enhanced through the use of AI. Digital technology is one of the so called ‘left shifts’ in the NHS 10-Year Plan.

AI won’t reduce the numbers of doctors and nurses the NHS needs. However, their education, training and how they practise will need to change, as a consequence of using AI in the future. It’s a good change; a change that will inevitably be resisted by some, if not many, health and care folk. Professionally, I’m at a point in my life, where such changes are unlikely to impact me. Personally, I’m sure that the impact will be having my future health and care needs met in a different way.

It’s the wider future that such changes represent, which I’m increasingly wanting to steer clear of. For example, I worry about future creativity, culture and education being shaped by AI to such an extent that we lose the human ability (and motivation) to be creative. I’m not alone in having these fears. The second story to catch my eye last week was about the UK’s Society of Authors. They recently launched a scheme that allows UK authors to use a ‘Human Authored’ logo on the back cover of their books. The aim is to help people distinguish books that are not AI-generated. It also helps protect copyrights.  

All acts of creativity require effort. They will often take time. Almost certainly, it will take determination and discipline. Creative skills and approaches become honed over time, and cannot, to my thinking, be acquired through using an AI shortcut. Many AI programmes, on the other hand, are built and ‘trained’ using the work of others – often without permission. This is fundamentally wrong. More recently there have been several successful court cases, where authors have sued and gained compensation from AI companies who have used their work without the authors permission. Such compensation is only right.

This blog post is number 867. Whilst my blogs are never going to be bestsellers, they are an example of a creative activity. Part of the reason for writing my weekly blog is to help me keep my mind and brain active. To use AI as a way of constructing each blog, would to me at least, be akin to asking AI to fill in the answers to The Times’ crossword - absolutely pointless. But the opportunity is there. I first write my blog in Microsoft Word, before I import it into my blog platform. For a while now, I will often get a message asking whether I would like Copilot (a form of AI) to rewrite my words. Sometimes I even get this message in the pause between constructing one sentence and another. It is an approach I would never ever consider.

Sadly, my disquiet is not simply confined to the creativity zeitgeist. I’m far from a philistine when it comes to the use of new technology. I’m very happy to use my laptop to write and post my blogs every week. However, the invasive nature of AI into social media channels for example, has reduced my previous extensive use of most social media platforms. The endless AI-created fantasies, and distorted realities leave me cold. I want a future where I can continue to talk to my hens, get dirt under my fingernails from tending our garden, and occasionally sail up the canal at 3 mph.