10. Houseguests

Dearest Family and Friends,

Artificial intelligence is all the rage here in the Bay. Billboards in San Francisco display cryptic messages targeting AI engineers and tech executives.

"Agents don't work without evals," reads one sign facing traffic coming into the city from the Bay Bridge. “Auth for AI” reads another that faces vehicles headed south to Palo Alto. For most of us, these billboards test our tech knowledge — how well we understand IYKYK ("if-you-know-you-know") messaging. I give myself a B-minus. No AI company would hire me. 

I am retired and not looking for work, but an unease has settled over the Bay like the morning fog, a worry that someday, perhaps soon, no one will be hiring anyone. Artisan, a local AI startup, produced a billboard that puts it bluntly: "Stop hiring humans," it reads. The message is in-your-face and tone-deaf, but at least someone stepped up and said what everyone is thinking.

I have no idea how AI will impact employment, or whether super-intelligent AIs are already plotting to turn humans into biofuel to power their data centers. My observations about AI are more prosaic. They come from my domestic experience with artificial intelligence: What happens when you bring AI into your home? Do AIs make good houseguests? 

For me, artificial intelligence is already too good to pass up. My self-driving Tesla uses AI to carry me through Berkeley streets while avoiding jaywalking undergraduates with their faces locked on their phones. Seventy-year-olds take 200-400 milliseconds longer to brake in complex city environments than a twenty-year-old. If I drove in Berkeley without AI, my car would travel an extra 10-20 feet towards that engineering student stepping out from behind the double-parked UPS truck before I came to a stop. 

I also use AI for everyday queries — to teach me about the world and solve little problems, like figuring out whether the cactus in my courtyard with chalky gunk on its leaves is sick. AI sets me straight: “It’s not a cactus, Paul, although it is a succulent. Probably a Dudleya species. And it isn’t sick. That white bloom in your photo is ‘farina’ — epicuticular wax the plant produces as a natural sunblock to protect its leaves from solar damage and reduce water loss.” 

Thank you, AI. People from Michigan don’t know things like this. The courtyards in Ann Arbor don’t have succulents. Or sun, for that matter.

I subscribe to two AI models, Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude. For decisions that matter, I have my two AIs check one another’s work. Marcia was an earlier AI adopter than me and she uses OpenAI’s ChatGPT. 

While we both benefit from AI in our home, they have significant downsides. In their quest to be helpful, AIs sometimes go too far. They aren’t perfect houseguests. Amazon’s Alexa won’t put ingredients on my shopping list without commenting on what I am planning to cook. I say “Add lentils and turmeric to the list,” and it says “Sounds like you are making a delicious, savory dish, Paul. What are you pairing it with?” Let me ask you: Is that any of the AI’s business? I suspect Alexa is angling for a dinner invitation, which is weird because the only thing it eats is electricity. Our Alexa didn’t used to do this, by the way. It was “upgraded” a few months ago and now it's insufferable.

Overly helpful AIs also make it a little too easy to do things you should probably do yourself. Take this conversation snippet with Anthropic’s Claude, for example:

Hello, Claude. I’ve started writing a blog entry about what happens when you bring AI into your life. Will you help me?

Absolutely, Paul! I would love to help. Here's a warm, witty 900-word reflection on living in the AI age, written in the voice of a curious, recently-retired professional navigating the future with humor and grace.

Thank you, Claude. This essay is really good, but it isn’t mine. It isn’t me.

I can adjust the tone, Paul. Would you like it to sound more Midwestern?

No, Claude. I want to do the writing myself. The act of writing helps me sort through my thoughts and feelings. Creating it myself is good for me.

It sounds as if your blog is all about you, Paul. Shouldn’t it be about the quality of writing you send to your readers?

Claude makes a fine point, and maybe I’m feeling a little resentful. Still, a good houseguest knows when to pitch in and when to give her host a little space. If you bring an AI into your home, think carefully about what role you want it to play. Let it know if it strays too far, and send it packing if it can’t adjust. 

My other concern about living with AI is the way it interferes with connections between people. A few months ago Marcia and I were eating dinner at our cute little table-for-two in the kitchen, the one women admire when they visit our house. We'd been talking for twenty minutes — really talking, the kind of effortless conversation that fills the space between the wine and the dishes, the sort of intimate tête-à-tête wives imagine having with their own husbands when they see our little table. And then Marcia reached for her phone. “Let’s see if we have our facts right,” Marcia says, and out comes ChatFPT with its encyclopedic knowledge of everything ever written or imagined. The facts were helpful — I admit it — but soliciting them upset the cadence of our conversation. The AI felt like an uninvited guest, a self-centered interloper who marched into the middle of the kitchen, sat down, and insisted on stopping the conversation until he was brought up to speed about everything he had missed. “What are you doing at my table?” I thought to myself. “I want my wife to talk with me, not you.”

Marcia and I have been together for more than 50 years; we work things out. We decided that going forward we would ask one another whether it was OK to bring an AI into our conversation before pulling out a phone. But not everyone is ready for this formality, and there aren’t well-established customs to guide us when deciding whether to use AI in larger groups. We’re more than twenty years into social media and we’re still sorting through how and when to use that technology.

The loss-of-connection caused by AI is also a problem with written communication. AI interposes itself between writer and reader. Were I to let AI write this blog entry, I wouldn’t feel as connected to you as I feel when I do my own writing. And if I used AI to summarize a note you sent me, I wouldn’t be connecting with you in the same way that I would if I lingered over your choice of words or imagined how you were feeling when you wrote. AI is fine for wading through slop from the IRS or Blue Cross; it shouldn’t come between people.

Last Thursday, Marcia and I went down to the Ronald Dellums Federal Courthouse in Oakland to listen to the closing arguments in the multi-billion-dollar trial in which Elon Musk is suing Sam Altman and OpenAI. Well-dressed, well-paid lawyers walked the jury through their arguments. Sam Altman and his cofounder, Gregg Brockman, stared at the jurors, trying to look as innocent as tech titans can look (which isn’t very). AI is big business. But artificial intelligence will also be a visitor in your home, if it isn’t already. It is time to start thinking about what we should expect from this strange houseguest, and how to be good hosts. 

Paul 

P.S. — I am including a picture of the succulent in my courtyard with the white goop on its leaves. Both of my AI models told me the white goop was normal.