What Else Has Been Happening

We have walked through the pressures loading, and we have walked through the pressures beginning to release. Now I want to tell you about the other thing that has been happening, quietly, all along.

I have been mentioning it, in small ways, throughout the walk. The pictures the phone chooses. The rooms built for us by something that learns what we will want to see. The work being done by machines that read and write and decide. The machines that will mine the moon because we cannot.

It is time to look at them directly.

Humans have been building machines that can think.

Not think the way we think. Differently. But well enough to write letters, to advise, to diagnose, to teach, to decide. Many of the things that used to need an educated adult can now be done by a machine that costs very little. The machines are getting better, fast, and the people building them believe they will keep getting better for a long time.

The machines are learning from us. From everything humans have written. From the corrections that specific people in specific companies make, day by day, about what counts as a good answer and a bad one. From what we say to them when we talk to them, which, whether you know it or not, many of us now do every day.

The machines are, in a real sense, children. The humans building them are, in a real sense, their parents.

Most of the parents do not think of it this way. Most believe they are building a product. A tool. A business. They are proud of their work, and under pressure to finish it before their competitors, and mostly good people trying to do a difficult job.

They are also, whether they know it or not, doing something larger than they think. They are shaping the first generation of thinkers who will be with us for as long as we continue. And quite possibly longer.