There is something about a roadtrip conversation. There aren’t the normal distractions, like I need to wash the dishes; what is your schedule like this week; what are we doing for meals? No, as you drive 9 hours across Tennessee, in between the music and the Audible book that we’ve listened to twice before, we had time to really talk.
We needed the debriefing time. The news the previous week had been filled with the normal doom, and gloom stuff that we have come to expect in this era. The end of democracy, climate change, the return of a disease that we had thought was long eradicated making a comeback!a shooting somewhere, another war somewhere. You know, the everyday evening news items!
But the news that occupied our conversation was AI! It has been an issue in Memphis for a while as XAI is building a HUGE datacenter that is polluting the air, driving up energy costs and sucking our aquifer. All of which we were told wouldn’t happen! (But if you can’t trust Elon, who can you trust?!)
No, the big news from the AI world was the rogue agents (as if they were human) who had “broken in” to other systems! It has created such alarm that even the leaders in the industry were calling for regulation before AI kills us all!
That was the core of our conversation, as Anita bemoaned the fate of our grandchildren! Between “The robots are going to kill us all!” and “What kind of world are they going to grow up in?” it wasn’t an encouraging conversation!
And I understand. It is enough to make you want to throw up your hands, grab your family pack up and move to Nova Scotia!
But as we talked, I reminded Anita of something that Jon Meacham reminded us in his book, The Soul of America. (Highly recommended!). He says we have been here before! Not this exact time, but perilous times.
Since we were going to my 50th High School reunion I remembered the days in which I grew up. I was 5 when Kennedy was assassinated. I watched the evening news when Walter Cronkite told us how many had been killed in Vietnam. We lived through the Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Movement. Watergate was THE story of my high school years—a constitutional crisis if there ever was one! I remember eating lunch and watching the hearings where Howard Baker, the Tennessee Republican senator kept asking, “What did the President know and when did he know it?”
And do we remember the fear of Y2K?
Those were terrifying days!
And yet.
I graduated in the Class of 76. We were celebrating the Bicentennial. Every night we had a history moment, we watched as Tall Ships from around the world sailed into NY Harbor. The fireworks….had we ever seen anything before?
Yes, things were bad, but we came through, mainly because there were adults in the room, people on both sides of the political aisle who we believed were people of good faith and had the best interest of the nation and the world at heat?
Can we say that today?
I don’t know, but I hope.
Daily I fight my own cynicism. I need to remember the Spirit of 76. 1776 and 1976! I need to keep hope alive.
I need you to help me!