You probably have seen this meme.

What do we want machines to do for us? What things do we want (or need) to do for ourselves? What is sacred, if anything? Should everything be automated?

My son and I take archery lessons. We don’t need archery. We don’t need to hunt, defend ourselves against invaders or predators, or really anything useful and practical from a bow and arrow. Yet we do it. And I have a feeling, it’s good for us.

As JFK once said:

We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard

I do a lot of things like this that I feel is good for me, simply because it’s hard. Journaling, bouldering, cycling, game programming, meditation. For a while I picked up guitar and while I didn’t become competent, I found it very compelling and I miss it.

It seems very possible that programming will no longer be necessary, because it will be a skill, like many others, that AI, even of the non-general kind, will be able to do for us. This raises some really big questions. We already have made most music, art, theater and writing impossible or unlikely to make a living at, even before LLM’s were springing up everywhere. Now we have LLMs that have essentially stolen others’ works made it even more difficult for these artisans to make a living at. And as the meme suggests, is this really the kind of thing we want AI to do for us? Do we want a world where the only work left for humans to do is they physical gruntwork, and perhaps a few useful trade industries like carpentry or plumbing (for a while at least)? Do we want to outsource music and poetry, science and medicine?

Beyond the economics problem, i.e. how do we provide a living for millions of knowledge workers who have been displaced from their careers, there’s a bigger issue. Do we want the only art or writing enjoyed to that which is created by machines? Do we really only want machine friends, machine lovers (think sexbots and the slew of romantic chatbot apps coming out now), machine therapists and machine actors?

I went to see Clue at Bass Hall with my girlfriend a couple of months ago, and what struck me about the whole experience was how utterly HUMAN the performance was. The actors jogged in place (comically!) to simulate running through the halls of the clue mansion. The cast was right in front of me and the crew was pushing around scenery, props and lighting in real time. We met a few of the cast members right afterwards. It felt wholesome. It felt healthy. It felt connecting. And mostly, it felt…human.

Look there’s nothing wrong with automating things. I have no issue with AI decoding the genome to help scientists find cures for diseases. I have no issue with self-driving vehicles or fork-lifts, waiters or even short order cooks.

I don’t even mind AI writing code, although I will probably hand code some things for my own benefit and enjoyment. Writing software gave me a very comfortable living for me and my family for two and a half decades. But more importantly, it let me be creative, solve puzzles, improve my mind.

If none of these endeavors are going to let us feed, clothe and house ourselves anymore, we have to find other reasons for doing it, and yet make sure that our basic needs are still met. I want to read human words and watch human actors, not AI generated films and stories. I want to make love to human women and share my burdens with humans friends and my human therapist, not talk to and copulate with robots. Most imporantly I want to think I don’t want us to forget how to think.

I think back to Star Trek: TNG where everyone did theater and music even though there was a holodeck on board, how Picar’ds family ran a vineyard and Sisco’s father ran a restaurant seemingly for the fun of it.

AI should free us of the gruntwork that we all have to do to stay alive–growing food, heating our homes, repairing our bodies building our homes. But it shouldn’t free us completely from thinking deeply about things, feeling heavy emotions in step with other humans, or making music. These are the things that make the human life worth living. Even writing code to make a silly game.

I’ll keep doing archery and bouldering, keep talking to my friends and family, keep writing games and making music, even if there’s no money in it.

Because I want to keep doing what’s human.