Chatting with Artificial Intelligence

I spoke with my son, Sven, who is currently working on his doctorate in law at Stanford University. He had recently attended a conference on AI and sent me a link so that I could better understand the important evolutions in AI and how this will change our lives. 

He also sent me a link so that I could experiment with AI. The AI theme became the inspiration for this month’s blog. I used chat.openai.com- https://chat.openai.com/  to try out the new artificial intelligence technology. 

I applied it to my website by asking the following question:

​My name is Dr. Susan Mossman Riva. I write a monthly blog on my book website Homing In an adopted child's story mandala of connecting reunion and belonging. I would like to write a blog about artificial intelligence that corresponds with the social science themes in my blog. Give me a theme concerning AI that would interest my readership with a link to an article that corresponds with the theme.

Here is the response that I was given:

One theme related to AI that may be of interest to your readership is the impact of AI on the future of work and employment. With the growing use of automation and AI in various industries, there are concerns about the potential displacement of human workers and the need to upskill or reskill to remain relevant in the job market.

Here is an article that you may find useful in your blog post: "The Future of Employment: How Susceptible are Jobs to Computerisation?" by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne. This study assesses the susceptibility of different jobs to computerisation based on their technical feasibility, cost of automation, and the skills required to perform the job. The authors estimate that up to 47% of US employment is at risk of being automated in the next few decades.

You could discuss the potential implications of this trend on the workforce and the need for individuals, organizations, and policymakers to adapt to this changing landscape. Additionally, you could touch on the ethical considerations of AI in the workplace, such as bias and privacy concerns.

Here is the article that AI suggested:

I followed the advice that was given to me in the AI chat to touch on the ethical considerations in the workplace. I found an article that discusses what a meaningful life might be in a post-work society. When our lives are not just judged by our accomplishments in the workplace, we will need to define other criteria to define the good life. The meaning-in-life debate is based on a humanistic approach to the Good, True, and Beautiful. These different dimensions of the good life can be developed in activities that create meaning in a future transformed by AI. The authors point to the importance of education that enables people to develop different interests that can contribute to a hybrid meaning system.

Developing a more democratic approach to education would facilitate world citizens’ ability to participate in meaning-making processes. Education can contribute in an important way, scaffolding a meaningful life in a lifeworld shaped by AI. Through education world citizens would be able to engage in the pursuit of knowledge and creative endeavors that would increase overall meaningfulness in their lives. Here is a quote from Knell and Rüther:
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“However, our aim here has been to sketch out a general perspective for meaningful life in a post-work future and not to give already a solution to the more specific problem of a fully egalitarian access to meaning. Nevertheless, the last consideration supplies an additional reason why pedagogical work is promoting the objective value of the good. For a good education can also enable people to develop interests in different kinds of arts and scientific research. Educational work, thus, is a specific source of meaning also by opening up access to meaningful experiences to other people and thereby also promoting a more equal access to meaning within society.”
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I have included the entire article so that you can better understand not only how the workplace will be transformed by AI, but how you can manage the change process and fashion a meaningful life. In our rapidly changing global context, it is important to consider a humanistic approach, imagining the criteria for a meaningful life that may be more contemplative and less influenced by work-based accomplishments and recognitions.