What do those four things have in common? Not much. Except three of the four things required the user to think about and know what they were doing. Can you guess which of the four those three are? Hint: those three no longer exist in common use, having been replaced by technologies based on the 14th element of the Periodic Table. Silicon.

So isn’t that a good thing today that if I want to write a research paper on aardvarks, I can quickly search the Internet with Firefox or Google Chrome on my laptop instead of trekking to the library to find a book or an encyclopedia article on that subject. A handheld calculator is much easier to use than a slide rule and generally much more accurate. Digital cameras, these days produce photographs arguably just as good or better than film cameras, and you don’t have to send the roll of film off to a laboratory and wait a week to get your pictures back. In fact, if you are reading this post on your smart phone you can do all three in just a matter of a few minutes.

How does AI relate to all of this? Consider this. If I want a picture of a beautiful sunset or waves crashing on a beach, I can just have an AI application create one for me. Nice. And I don’t even have to go out of the house and risk enjoying the brisk weather on the seashore or the solitude of an evening walk. Maybe an AI math app can give me the orbital speed of a planet and I don’t have to bother with understanding Kepler’s laws. After all, the answer looks logical. As far as a research paper on aardvarks all I have to do is ask ChatGPT to write it for me and I will have more time with my leisure activities.

Of course, AI can be very useful, but like improperly using the technologies that replaced encyclopedias, slide rules and film cameras you can still easily get something that looks right, but isn’t. On all of these examples, you get the idea — I hope.

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