What is the difference between a rat and a squirrel? There is no difference — squirrels are just rats with better PR. So runs the joke. Sometimes I think of artificial intelligence like a squirrel with excellent marketing, its overpaid pundits assuring us that nothing more important has ever happened in history, that it is the answer to our every question and the solution to our every problem. The tale is repeated so many times that it seems more real than our lived experience. I have heard people rant about the marvels of AI while grappling with its many glitches, whether it is a digital assistant misunderstanding them, facial recognition not recognizing them, or a chatbot suggesting that they put glue in their food. We suffer from optimism bias to such an extent that seemingly no technology failure, no matter how epic, will dissuade us from believing the story that technology will be our savior, and that whatever problems it has now will not be there in the future. Everywhere I look there is talk about AI and digital technology. It’s not only that I work in this field. Chatter about AI follows me at dinner parties, it weaves in and out of the conversations strangers share in restaurants and on public transport, on the radio, on podcasts of every kind, and on every morning show on TV. But the more I study digital technology, the more I am in awe of the richness and the primacy of the analog world, the world of things you can touch and smell, the world of things that are not made up of ones and zeroes (the building blocks of the digital). When I was asked recently where I find hope, it struck me that hope lies in the analog. And as the world around us seems to grow gloomier, and people around me more pessimistic, I find myself in the unfamiliar situation of going from being the bad cop who is used to thinking about what can go wrong to the good cop who seeks the rays of light in neglected corners. Analog creatures in an analog world We are analog creatures. What matters most for our wellbeing is and will always be analog. Virtual water will never quench our thirst, not a year from now and not in a thousand years, because virtual water is no kind of water at all. Digital food will not satisfy our appetites, and AI companions will not ward off our loneliness. The people around us are made out of flesh and blood. Much of what it means to be a human being lies in our relationships to others, which is why Aristotle called us political animals. But it takes the honing of skills to perfect our social relationships. We polish ourselves by interacting with one other. We work on our empathy by observing how our words and actions affect others. We build strong relationships by making ourselves vulnerable to one another and learning how to protect other people’s feelings when they make themselves vulnerable to us. We learn to temper our emotions to avoid hurting those we love. We deepen our ties by looking after one another. We take care of each other physically — we cook a clueless philosopher bolognese to make sure they eat enough protein, we accompany our friend to the doctor’s office, we help each other move places — and emotionally, which more often than not involves the body as well — we sit with another as they face their worst fears, embrace each other for affection and reassurance, and speak softly to our loved ones, using our voices to soothe. That is partly why we read out loud to our children. In a moment of distress, I once called an old friend who had enough intuition to ask no questions and sing on the phone a tune we used to know a long time ago. We learn from each other. I don’t think I would have grown to love Shakespeare as I do if it hadn’t been for my high school teacher, Mr. Roger D. Gouran, who got goosebumps every time he cited his favorites lines from Julius Caesar, Hamlet, and Othello; remembering those moments still moves me — and makes me want to reread Shakespeare. Learning from a screen is much harder because it is thoroughly missing the personal relationship that can inspire you to wake up at six in the morning to get to read Shakespeare before school starts, the emotional resonance in reading together that makes you take in the words in all their social meaning. We learn life tricks — from how to change a light bulb to how to mend clothes — by watching others. We become better at understanding nonverbal cues and responses the more we spend time with others. All these observations are not sentimental Luddite platitudes. They are facts. I worry that young people are losing social skills. Madrid is my favorite city in the world, and when I’m there I depend much less on digital maps, reveling in the luxury of asking passersby for directions and getting the added benefit of a smile or a recommendation or a piece of information that I wouldn’t even have known to ask for. Spanish culture makes me feel that people on the streets are friends whom I haven’t met yet. Whenever I ask younger people, however, they stare at me as if they were judging me for not asking Google instead. Did I not get the memo? But one of the things I love about Madrid is that, when you enter a bar and see two people talking, you can never be entirely sure whether they are old friends or strangers who struck up a new friendship a few minutes ago. What we gain in convenience by using digital maps is not worth the loss in social richness when we ask a friendly stranger for directions; that friendly stranger could end up a friend,
Analog Hope
