Florida Workers' Comp: Everybody Wake Up!

Pop sensation Jax released The New Girl (Dear Joe, 2024, Apple Music), and it is all about her perceptions and allegations against the "new girl." The song's theme juxtaposes Jax in contention with her crowd, none of whom can see there is a problem. She intones

Who invited the demon?
Which one of you brought it here?
Who let it inside?
Can we put it outside?
There's something wrong with Steven
He's acting really weird like he's possessed
He's hypnotized (Uh-huh)

And the "demon," she eventually confides is "the new girl." Well, we are all facing similar reactions to the new "demon" on the block. Progress is on us, and it has a vengeance.

Remember school? No one liked the new kid on the block. Hollywood milked that theme to tropehood over the years, You see, from any perspective, the new kid means change. And we do not like change. I have written that and written that. So many of life's interactions and the reactions you perceive can be traced back to change and its influence.

Back in 2018 I took on that subject in a lecture and memorialized some thoughts in WCRI 34th Annual Conference - March 2018 (February 2018). My theme is reasonably simple:

Change will happen.
You cannot prevent change
Change will affect you
Successful people will accept and adapt
The most successful people will leverage change

I thought I had been clear with that. However, there continue to be reactions and actions precipitating from the simple fact that change is real. I get it. The challenges of today are often simply enough for us. To be honest, today's challenges are periodically too much. Therefore, too many of us ignore the future or any consideration of what it is or when it will arrive.

Computers are increasingly capable daily. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is poised to be the invasive species to end all invasive species. It is likely the greatest threat to the workplace that we have faced in decades, perhaps ever. There is an existential threat before us, rambling in our direction like an uncontrolled freight train, and reactions are mixed. Some are standing on the tracks like hypnotized deer, some are running for the side ditch with plans to watch it pass, and others are diving deeply into how they might leverage this energy tempest to either be propelled before it, drafted alongside it, or pulled into its ion tail.

Artificial Intelligence is coming. You can no more stop it than you can stop Christmas coming. See The Grinch (January 2024). No, change is coming. And in a strange corollary to Moore's Law, it is coming faster than you thought. I have that assurance from some of the brightest minds in law, and they have been studying this "demon" for years.

The truth is that some of us have been concerned about technology for years. I have been writing about it for a decade (a list of various Artificial Intelligence articles is at the end of this post). I have made some observations in the past regarding inevitability.

I knew people who became paralegals when the word processor revolution killed the typing pool. See Will Revolution be Violent (October 2015). I watched Ludites deny the implications of the Internet while clinging to their analog past in the 1990s. I listened to deniers explain that my affinity for the cell phone was childish and wasteful. I know a great many who have floundered in the Social Media marketing revolution and a small group that has shone and excelled.

Are we in a tech revolution? Or are we in just the latest of the tech revolutions? The steam engine changed the world and shifted populations. The internal combustion engine, the telegraph, the telephone, the facsimile, the personal computer, and the list goes on. We are in a tech revolution, and it has been going on for decades. The only thing that has changed (or not) is the conservatism of Moore's law.

Moore was one of the founders of Intel in the 1960s. If you ever find yourself in San Jose, California, the free museum at Intel is a fantastic journey through history and it can be absorbed in less than two hours. People do not like to think about this, but the personal computer was only possible because of the integrated circuit, and the Intel folks were integral in that. In 1965, Gordon Moore said that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit would double

"every year for the next 10 years"

He was wrong. Give him credit, he was among the most tech-ready and prescient innovators in human history. But he was wrong in believing that there was a predictable end point. Merely ten years later, in 1975, he revised Moore's law:

"the number of transistors on an integrated circuit will double every two years with minimal rise in cost."

That one he got right. We find ourselves 50 years later and the rate of transistor expansion continues. Similarly, AI power and capability is exponential and its progress is likely to exceed the early predictions.

The machines are improving themselves and each other. And, unlike us, those machines are effective 24/7/365. As Sarah Connor noted of the Terminator in the movie of that name (Orion 1984):

"It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop... ever"

Computers have empowered us. They have changed the way we think, and in some ways, they have relieved us from the burdens of thinking. I don't remember a single person's phone number anymore. I have no idea what my commitments are for next week. I am, truthfully and inescapably, in a co-dependent relationship with the integrated circuit and all that it has brought.

It has brought retention, convenience, productivity, and speed. Speed is a double-edged sword, as observed by Mitch Ratcliffe:

“A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history-with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.”

He was right, computers bring speed. Many of us have learned that lesson the hard way with an errant email or text message. We can truly make errors at light speed. And computers, whose progress and evolution have depended largely on human inspiration and intellect, are now being designed, improved, and accelerated by other computers. Artificial intelligence is making itself smarter and its hosts better.

We should truly be looking at AI. Not a few of us. Not periodically. We should be looking at this systemically, functionally, legislatively, regulatorily, holistically, spiritually, and beyond. As Jax proceeds in her "New Girl,"

I never trusted it, I never trusted it (Ah)
I never trusted it, I never trusted it
Everybody wake up
There's been a mistake

If you are not paying any attention, you will regret it. Change is coming. There will be grand benefits and huge payoffs in convenience, productivity, and more. There will also be enormous pitfalls into which some will unfortunately plunge. As Ronald Regan suggested, a good course is "trust but verify." That is an amalgamation of both faith and skepticism that is healthy. The choice is yours.

For the near future, this blog will focus on the challenges of AI once each week. The drive will be to raise your consciousness about where it is coming from and where it is going. I will strive to take my perceptions from the last decade, and form them into a hopefully coherent framework through which the reader may view the demon.

Prior posts on AI and Robotics

Will the Postal Service be our Model for Reform? (August 2014)

Attorneys Obsolete (December 2014)

How Will Attorneys (or any of us Adapt? (April 2015)

Salim Ismail and a Life-Changing Seminar (May 2015)

The Running Man from Pensacola, Florida (July 2015)

Will Revolution be Violent (October 2015)

Ross, AI, and the new Paradigm Coming, (March 2016)

Chatbot Wins (June 2016);

Robotics and Innovation Back in the News (September 2016)

Universal Income - A Reality Coming? (November 2016)

Artificial Intelligence in Our World (January 2017)