Re: “What the future will say we got wrong about AI” (July 19, Opinion):
Kevin Frazier’s guest essay on the slow pace of artificial-intelligence adoption is the single most depressing thing I have ever read. He contends we will all regret not adopting all the wonderful potential of AI more quickly. All the computing power in the world cannot replace the beauty of humanity. AI is immensely valuable for scientific and medical research but other than that, it’s garbage. We don’t need everything around us accelerating at breakneck speed. The resulting loss of jobs, personal connections and good old human problem-solving is tragic.
Humanity is slowly slipping away from us, and we are letting it happen. Amazon warehouse workers don’t have a second to relax. Starbucks baristas must hustle at an ungodly pace. Life is so much better at a slower pace, where people have time to connect, and where AI is a small tool, not the whole ballgame. We don’t need self-driving anything. We don’t need to re-skill anyone to fit into an AI-saturated world.
We need less noise, less divisiveness, less technology in our lives, not more. It’s a beautiful world, a beautiful life, if we all embrace a smile, a kind gesture and the off button on all our screens.
Jim Spurr, Port Townsend
