This week, I had a great opportunity to play the game Situation Lab’s Thing from the Future. At first, I didn’t understand what I had to do and was flipping through the cards using the generator.  Then I realized, the excel generator combined the cards together and it was less complicated. (oops!) Now I learned something new 🙂

The first scenario generated for me was the following:

“Describe or narrate a scenario about a candy found two generations into a future in which a profound historical evolution has occurred. Your description should address issues related to algorithms and elicit feelings of dread.”

To match the gamification nature of this week’s exercise, I created a short interactive game and tried to connect it to the readings we had this week. Enjoy!

As I create and implement the changes to this game according to this story, it made me think of ChatGPT and how slow I am at creating an artifact compared to them. I enjoyed Dr. Shannon Vallor’s talk immensely and I find that I agree with almost everything she mentioned.  One quote that stuck with me was that “AI was still not ready for solo flight” (Vallor, 2018) and it is up to us, as humans as a collective to ensure that it is used for the greater good that can enhance the human race rather than hinder it.

This reminds me of an article I recently read where Bill Gates suggest that “AI could lead to 3-day work week” (Murphy, 2023) because it can help us “cook and stuff”. Now this might scare people into thinking that it is another step to eliminating jobs. As we look around, it is true. Self-check outs are slowly replacing humans cashiers and in countries like Japan, there are stores that are entirely run by robots.  However, Microsoft’s co-founder suggests that the “purpose of life is not just to do jobs, AI could provide major benefits to productivity, health care and education” (Murphy, 2023).   This can sound optimistic for the average family who wishes to spend more time with their kids. It can potentially eliminate scenarios in Tommy Orange’s story where the child believes that adults “hates children” (Ford, 2020) and adults only puts up with them until they can drop them off at school, escape and focus on work.

This is slowly becoming a reality. 5 years have passed since Dr. Vallor’s talk, and while it is still true that AI is still not at a stage for full autonomy, (i.e.: In Greenspan’s example, there are no self-driving vehicles launched to the public in America yet to prevent potential accidents like the uber self-driving vehicle.) I can see companies such as Microsoft using the data and/or educational material that we publish / hosted on their servers to enhance their AI to create curriculum at record speed.  Like Mitrovic, I can “speculate” that AI can “open up all sorts of possibilities that can be discussed, debated, and used to collectively define a preferable future”(Mitrović, 2021) for a new generation of tech savvy learners. Perhaps a new classroom setting where learners can learn wherever and whenever in person or online and the traditional classroom will evolve into something that is entirely new.

Jobs still won’t be eliminated, but we humans will adapt and change our roles in society based on what is built by the elites. Mitrović et al. made a great point about speculative design and instead of being scared of it, we can embrace the future to see how it can be used to enhance human lives.

There are a lot of positive ideas being proposed, but for some reason, there is still a feeling of unease and dread when I look at this. There are a lot of promise from the higher ranking business men and women in society, but will it really enhance people’s lives, or will the thoughts of greed result in AI only benefiting the select few who are privileged enough to experience the rewards?

There’s still a lot of room to explore in the realm of AI and I am not brave enough to see the end result.

References:

Ford, A. C. (Host). (2020, September 2). Tommy Orange: Reopening. [Audio podcast episode]. In The Chronicles of Now. Pushkin Industries.