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Im not exactly proficient at winter driving, even though Ive lived my whole life in colder climates.
And then the automations in that Audi A8 kicked in.
Are we okay with this?
As we enter the age of AI, there are a few questions that need to be asked.
Chief among them is this: Are we okay with AI and other automations doing the thinking for us?
Arecent study by Microsoft and Carnegie-Mellonis enlightening in this regard.
As we all know, chatbots likeClaudeandGrok 3are powerful, efficient, and quick.
They cancraft works of fictionand solve complex math problems.
Since that incident in the Audi, Ive become a better winter driver as the technology has only improved.
Today, cars can drive on their own, keeping you centered in your lane.
An algorithm knows where you are on the roadway and can avoid oncoming cars (and school buses).
As a journalist, Ive driven hundreds of vehicles.
Since that incident, Ive almost always enabled the safety tech in cars Im testing.
And yet, I wonder what is happening to me.
The most dangerous threat is the one you dont even know about.
Are we losing our minds to Google?
We dont have to look far to see how other technologies have changed how we think.
First cameGoogle, then came social media which feeds us content based on an algorithm.
Both serve their purpose and can help humanity.
Yet, both serve as warning signals.
Well-known author Nicholas Carr noted in 2008 thatwere losing our minds to Google.
It uses brain power.
We relied on Google first, then we started doomscrolling on social media.
We let the algorithm determine what we view and what we consume.
Apps likeFacebookand X have influenced elections and fostered conspiracy theories.
And yet, social media is just a taste of things to come.
AI now translates written text about 100 billion times per day.
AI models have been trained to detect cancer in patients with a 95% degree of accuracy.
Human doctors looking at the same radiological scans are only about 87% accurate.
Similarly, we assume that reliance on technology helps us achieve more, to be more innovative.
The truth is a bit more muddy.
We may receive a finished product but we wont understand how it was made.
Think about how we all learn to speak.
Its mostly by trial and error.
A toddler starts by stringing several nonsensical words together to try and form sentences.
