Durable Human (2 book series)

The Pope, Woz, and So Long, Sora: Reasons to be Apocaloptimistic After the AI Doc

The day after I saw The AI Doc: or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, I felt strangely buoyant. Maybe we can steer the future in the right direction. I began to see reasons for hope.

All this happened after the movie’s release:

In Court

The family of a young man shot to death at Florida State University sued OpenAI, claiming Chat GPT helped the killer plan the attack. After viewing the victim’s chat logs, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier opened a criminal investigation. “If ChatGPT were a person,” he said, “it would be facing charges for murder.”

In the first of hundreds of similar cases, juries found Google’s YouTube and Meta liable for debilitating mental health harms to young people. A judge in New Mexico is about to rule on whether Meta must redesign its platforms to make them safer for children. Social media is a primitive form of AI.

Laws and Regs

On May 19, the U.S. federal TAKE IT DOWN law went into full effect. Americans can now go to this website to “report platforms that fail to remove intimate photos or videos posted without your consent.” The vast majority of non-consensual intimate images (NCII) are made with AI. Platforms must remove offending content within 48 hours.

Dozens of states also have laws protecting children from emotional and reputational harm stemming from AI-generated Deep Fake videos and NCII. So far, Congress has fended off efforts by U.S. President Donald Trump to ban or nullify state laws restricting AI.

Collective Action

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The AI Doc: From the Durable Human Perspective

Ad on a bus in San Francisco says Stop Hiring Humans

This is a synopsis of The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist:   

A father-to-be tries to figure out what is happening with all this AI insanity. The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist is a hand-made, eye-opening documentary about the most powerful technology humanity has ever created…and what’s at stake if we get it wrong.

The following review tells the whole story. With that spoiler alert, you may wish to leave this screen and watch The AI Doc, which you can easily do in the comfort of your home. Even if you stick around, be sure to see the movie. So, here we go:

Art reflected life as I stepped into the darkened theater.

I was in the heart of San Francisco, where all AI startups seem to be born.

In the weeks I’d been visiting the city, I’d pass people on the street and wonder: did they have a hand in a phenomenon compared to the discovery of fire? Billboards shouted AI’s benefits. Ads on busses screamed: “STOP HIRING HUMANS.”

I sit next to my daughter-in-law—herself an executive at an established startup. My son is back at their apartment recovering from upper jaw surgery. His art studio is blocks from the theater. From early days, he’d sketch in the margins of his school papers and notebooks. Soon after graduating from college with a degree in industrial design, Nike had hired him in part for how he could draw up great ideas on the fly.     

Co-director and on-screen narrator Daniel Roher draws or paints most of the graphics in the movie. Sketchbooks will play a central and active role.

As the movie begins, we see Daniel as a boy, learning about computers and having fun making his own videos. His relationship with technology seems sympatico until one day, he notices that computers have begun to churn out entire screenplays. His dander up, he determines to find out more about this precocious digital intruder.  

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Just Say No to AI Toys

They may be cute. They may be clever. But they’re not good for kids. Child health experts are warning not to buy children’s toys that use artificial intelligence.

Child advocacy non-profit Fairplay, along with child developmental experts from the Global Alliance for Inspiring Non-tech Infant Nurturing and Growth, advise that AI toys “can undermine healthy development and pose unprecedented risks for kids and families.”

What are AI Toys?

AI toys are plushies, robots, and other playthings embedded with artificial intelligence chatbots. The AI mimics human characteristics and acts as a child’s friend.

Some AI toys are on wheels and can snake through cluttered playrooms. Cameras behind their eyes record and relay to the manufacturer what they see and hear.

Sparkly angel teddy bears are online for children “ages 0 to 20”.    

Toy makers are telling families the products are safe and beneficial “before their impact has been assessed by independent research,” says the Fairplay advisory.

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Turns out, Parents of Babies and Toddlers are Irreplaceable

For little ones, nothing can match their parents’ human touch. So says an unprecedented 37-nation alliance of clinicians, researchers, educators, and advocates.  

The group cites a cascade of new research supporting an age-old notion: parents and caregivers provide the back-and-forth responsive attention and play that children need in their first years of life—and screen time can’t compare.

Babyhood: A Once in a Lifetime Opportunity

Babyhood is the only time in life the human brain is growing so quickly.

“The first years of life are a critical time for brain development, when the baby’s back and forth social experiences with loved ones build the brain connections for processing language and social information,” says Karen Heffler, M.D., a developmental researcher from Drexel University School of Medicine in the U.S.

“Screen time disrupts and displaces these essential experiences,” she underscores.

Heffler is also part of the Global Alliance for Inspiring Non-tech Infant Nurturing and Growth, or GAINING.

To inform governments, healthcare providers and parents worldwide about new research on the developmental needs of children from birth to age 3, GAINING is distributing “awareness alerts” worldwide.

A “News to Know” alert for parents explains “how the brain develops in the first years sets the foundation for your child’s overall health and well-being” and that screen time can interfere.

Parents Stretched Thin

Though parents have the best of intentions, giving their all can be tough when attention-grabbing screens are everywhere and stress is a daily reality.

“To support parents and acknowledge how difficult life can be, we strived to be understanding in what we wrote,” María de los Angeles Paúl, pediatrician from Chile and GAINING member told the journal Perspectives in Infant Mental Health.

Tech has Unfair Advantage

GAINING also cites research that the “educational” label on apps and shows made for the youngest children can be misleading.

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