And just like that, it’s time for my annual birthday column. August 2, a Leo.
I have been writing this column for 36 years. I’ve never missed a week. That’s 1.9 million words, equal to about 25 books.
These columns have all been archived at newspapers.com, a division of ancestry.com, along with each entire edition of the Northside Sun. It’s cool to think my progeny, if I have any, will be able to read them. Of course, the probability of that happening is almost nil. Even if the Internet doesn’t melt down and all the data get erased, who would actually care?
Likewise, thousands of my grandfather’s and father’s columns are accessible through newspapers.com. On my bucket list is to go back and read many of them. Such a big bucket list and so little time.
One of my dearest friends and colleagues, Charlie Dunagin, told me once. “It’s very strange. You spend your entire life accumulating knowledge and wisdom and then you die and it’s all gone.” I suppose thanks to AI, it all now gets sucked into the great Large Language Model for all of humanity to use for the foreseeable future. So strange.
It has been a joyous privilege to have made a living writing for all these years. I am infinitely grateful to all the readers, supporters and subscribers who have made this possible. I have tried to leave it all on the field, being excruciatingly honest as I write about life, trying to be real and connect and add value to those who read my columns.
Everywhere I go people come up to me and tell me they’ve been reading my column for years and have enjoyed them. These kind comments have meant the world to me. I feel like my career has been worthwhile.
At the very least, I played a key role in stopping the Kemper power plant from being laid on the backs of Mississippi ratepayers. That saved six billion dollars for 190,000 households. I feel like that alone has justified the considerable expense my parents sacrificed for my education. It’s one reason I sleep well at night.
I have spent my life learning and then using my knowledge to advance, in a small way, the progress of this wonderful nation in which we live. What a blessing! I think I will continue to do this as long as I can. As they used to say in the old days, “I have printer’s ink in my blood.”
As much knowledge as I have accumulated, it’s a tiny fraction of the knowledge available in the AI Large Language Models. These models have consumed almost all the knowledge in the world. And they can produce articles and commentary in a few seconds on any possible subject. I have been obsoleted. So sad.
Buckle your seat belts. The technology revolution is just getting started and the pace of acceleration is going to be mind blowing.
I am, by nature, an optimist. As William Faulkner famously said in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, I believe man will not just survive but will prevail. But there will be bumps in the road.
I think back historically on the industrial revolution which transformed society. The change broke asunder our cultural, political and social institutions. The whole world erupted in flames. Two hundred million people died in WWI, WWII and the communist revolutions. What a waste.
In this new knowledge revolution, let us pray that the technological disruption doesn’t cause similar loss of human lives. This is where faith in God and innate optimism are critical aspects of a good life.
Who knew that combining parallel computer processing with neural networks would create artificial intelligence? Very few. Both technologies had been around forever, falling in and out of favor. When Nvidia CEO Jenson Huang put the two together using their latest video game chips, the world changed.
The litmus test was whether a computer could recognize different types of animals. For decades, this could not be achieved with better than 60 percent accuracy. Then, out of the blue, neural nets merged with parallel processing were able to do this perfectly. Researchers were astounded. Nobody could believe it. Artificial Intelligence was born.
Now the world, mainly U.S. companies, is in a gold rush to spend eight trillion dollars on AI data centers. It’s by far the biggest bet on the advancement of earth-changing technology in the history of the world.
Dozens of companies are racing to build humanoid robots capable of performing human tasks. Rather than tediously programming these robots with lines of code, which could never work, new robotic AI models allow the robots to learn on their own and instantly share their new knowledge through the cloud to every other robot. One could argue that within a decade or two, there is very little a robot could not do.
Imagine, robots doing all the work that man has slaved for millennia to do through blood, sweat and tears. Is it paradise? Or is it the fall of man? Only God knows.
I have a theological question. Can man, as the creator of AI, impart original sin to its robots? Or is original sin limited to human flesh? The fate of humanity may rest on this question.
Five years ago, I predicted self-driving cars would be a reality in five years. They are here now in limited cities and soon will be available to the average car owner. AI says a robot will be able to clean your house and do general household chores on demand by 2032. That’s not very far away.
I would love to retire and write a book. Not that anybody will read it, but I would enjoy writing it. There are so many books and so little time.
Instead, I am working harder and more fully engaged than ever. I can’t retire. My industry is under assault by technology, and it is taking every bit of my accumulated skill and experience to keep it going. Local news is hanging on by a thread. Good thing I have always loved a challenge.
I remember when I first got old enough to comprehend my own mortality. It struck profound fear and distress in my soul. I wondered how old people could carry on, knowing their fate was to soon die.
I have outlived my father by three years. By the grace of God, I have little fear of death (although I do fear the process of dying). The longer you live, the more you can put your own life in the proper perspective and that dissipates the fear of death. As my father told me just before he died, “Death is as natural as life.”
I feel so grateful that I have lived a full life. Every morning my body creaks and moans a little bit more, but life is a gift from God and I’m going to enjoy every last bit of it for His glory.
How wonderful to be in a place where I am surrounded by loving, kind, believers who get that. Mississippi is God’s country, one of the most spiritual places in the world. Don’t take that for granted. It is an astounding blessing.
