Tony Boutin: We won't need to think when computers do everything for us

To The Daily Sun,

I watched a classic movie. It involved the exchange of secret love letters written in elegant, cursive writing. Letters discovered decades later. Considered lost treasures by relatives.

There won’t be treasures like that for the next generation to find. Cursive writing and penmanship are now art forms from the stone age. Skills once taught in public school, highly revered, are no longer required. Finding a thumb drive won’t be the same thrill. 

We no longer need to write, spell or do punctuation. Programs that do all that and more. Math has little need, either. We got calculators, iPhones and computers that do math faster than Einstein. Reading, that’s a tad dicier, but tens of thousands of books have already been recorded. You can enjoy them in your easy chair or driving down the road.

Are humans on the path to "brain dead?" A place where no person really needs to know much of anything? Soon, we won’t even have to think. Real intelligence where brain cells actually vibrate are being replaced by an artificial version. A heavy blade will lop the heads of millions of jobs.

Only two paths for work will remain. One for a very few, super smart, super educated Harvard-Stanford types. They will run the gears of a new AI super machine. They’ll find work with incomes beyond the cosmos. Path two, the jobs AI can’t replicate. Jobs like stone mason, electrician, plumber, landscaper, roofer, cesspool cleaner, auto mechanic, and types that require two hands and physical labor.

In this brave new job world, 90% of people we now force feed to college won’t need it. The old higher education model is as dead as cursive writing. Is society ready? Hell no. Higher education will fight this reality with fangs out and flame throwers. The same way education fights all change.

Tony Boutin

Gilford