Just Shut Up

A.I. or AI

Back in 1983ish, Fred Ballard Sr. (a named partner at Ballard Spahr & Ingersoll, and Ernesta's husband) was interested in learning about the status of AI and possible benefits to a legal practice. We researched. Best we came up with was "expert system" to draft documents, and the software choices weren't very good. One was Workform, created and marketed by Eric Little. We experimented with using it for Will and Trust documents. I don't think we ever got it to work well. The time was not yet ripe. But well into his 80's, Fred Ballard was ahead of his time. He questioned whether or not "Personal Computers". or "PCs" as they were called, belonged on lawyers' desks? He experimented. He had always been a mentor to younger lawyers, and he had always given deep focus to improving lawyer writing skills. Within a year, Fred concluded that the lawyers who used PCs and word processing software improved their writing skills much quicker than those who wrote the old way - longhand or dictated, then typed by the secretary, and then edited by the author - and this cycle took days to do a 360. So those with PCs were doing faster 360s, and probably more of them.

Fast forward. Data collection begins. I had a IOMEGA Bernoulli Box that had two 10 megabyte removable cartridges, each about 3" x 8x. It was revolutionary. I could copy from one cartridge to the other - giving me the technology needed to back up 10 Megabytes of data! "Floppies" were still 5 1/4" thin disks, encased in a square plastic cover. Chat rooms were accessed via dial-up land lines. 600, and then 1200 and later, 2400 modems. Analog modems morph into digital modems. In 1988, POTS (plain old telephone service), a analog technology, was laid to rest... by just not installing any new lines. IP (Internet Protocol - IP) and Voice over IP - VoIP) become standard for voice and data. VoIP converts voice to data, so it's all just data transmission between computers. Cellular phone service is also an option. Data transmission speeds explode. Networking computers becomes easy and inexpensive. Personal computer speeds and data storage allow the server hardware market to spring to life. DOS becomes Windows. iOS rises, nearly dies, and then roars back to life. (Once you go MAC, you don't look back.) Color monitors become the norm. GUIs (graphical user interfaces) control how data is presented on the screen, with lots of images and colors. Photographs become easy to show to millions, perhaps billions, of people all over the world. A common mindset is created. E-mail and shared electronic calendars become mandatory business apps, and eventually, apps for personal use. Podcasts become a new communication vehicle. Network TV dies. Computers in phones - voice, audio AND data - are just about mandatory to survive in the world.

By about 2006ish, Facebook is is accepted as a thing, replacing MySpace. Social media is born. It morphs into a multitude of different software applications. Today, they are called "apps". (Have you ever tried to explain to your grandfather that "The App Store" isn't a brick and mortar building you enter to make a purchase?. Some are free and other cost money. And of course, today's apps capture your data - and send it to the central repository. Twitter rises. Telegram bites at the ankles of this market segment.

So how much personal information have I put out there that was sucked up by the data-Beast?

Who has used my data, and for what purposes? What are the names of the entities who have purchased my data? Which pieces of my data have been used to train AI?

I have refrained from using AI apps thus far. Initially, when AI's applications became known to the public - who cared to read that boring shit - only for NERDS - I kind of felt it is probably going to become very dangerous. I briefly looked into submitting what I write to a literary LMM (large language model) for comment and suggested revisions. But I didn't follow through.

But now, perhaps a year later, I have no question that the continued development of AI is inevitable. It is a leap forward in our evolution. We must refine development and use it in properly harnessed and beneficial ways. But the chances of that happening are slim. It WILL continue to develop, but unless we unharness a police force like GORT to keep it beneficial, someone's going to do bad things with it. But WHO is to say what is good and what is bad? That's actually a discussion we need to have.