Cowardice and Fighting the Machine

All these years, I haven’t yet put my finger on why I am this way, but I was never able to decide what I wanted to be when I grew up. I oscillated between chef, engineer, doctor, musician, painter. I still do, to a lesser extent. I held very strong feelings about each decision, getting defensive when someone was critical of my choices or skills. These explorations were not merely flights of fancy or play things, they were integral to who I was and meant something to me. All this to say, discovery was and is a key theme of my life and career.

In my career, that of a scientific researcher, two things that brings me the most joy are unexpected results and sudden connecting of the dots. The finding of something new, whether that be knowledge gained by connecting ideas I’ve read or through experimentation, is pure ecstasy. It will get me giddy and I’ll want to run and tell everyone of what I found or realized. To me, this enthusiasm is seldom shared.

I was recently given some insightful wisdom into this topic that motivated me to write this piece. This gentleman noticed a lot of his contemporaries complaining about their profession and having to deal with paper-pushing and bureaucracy. He mentioned three things to dissuade them: that this negativity only feeds negativity causing people to become disillusioned with their jobs overtime, that continually talking about the negatives of their career and not highlighting the positive fails to inspire future generations to join the profession, and the third thing he mentioned hit me like a ton of bricks. Our job is not as engaging as it used to be. Technology has put people into offices and taken them out of the outdoors, where the job used to involve exploring beautiful places. Additionally, coworkers used to have barbecues and drink beers together after work. Everyone was friends and work was a fun place to be.

This made me realize my field had fallen into the same fate. Researchers discuss online through email or teams calls. Colleagues no longer sit down together at a chalkboard and hash out hard problems like the days of the Manhattan Project. Computers perform calculations and now AI can mine research for insight and come up with the next best material to test. All of this results in a work environment that can be a miserable place to work (https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/careers/workers-morale-pay-benefits-remote-52c4ab10). While this is not true of every job, it appears that most jobs are this way or are trending this way. While we can blame employees, saying employees nowadays simply don’t want to work, It is also likely that the work places we have designed breed dissatisfaction.

The expedient lean on technology to solve our issues is deeply rooted in history and has not been a bad thing per say, helping increase the quality of life for many around the globe. But, personally, a line has been crossed.

To me, artificial intelligence and technology are encroaching on the joy of scientific discovery, serendipitous insight, and distillation and communication of these findings. Indeed machines do excel in making discoveries and are capable of combing over far more information than a human being, there is a price to be paid for this convenience. For me, this price has become too high to pay.

Now, an argument often heard is that technology is too powerful and that there is no point to challenging the machine. Through some reading and personal reflection, I’ve come to view this choice as cowardice.

I am no stranger to cowardice. I left my PhD when COVID hit. I’ve run away from jobs that got too difficult. I finished high school and college a year early because schooling was getting too boring. I am well aware of taking the easy way out because I have done it, time and time again. The only way to overcome cowardice is by breaking the cycle and biting the hand that feeds.

To me, this tactical decision takes this form in scientific research. The first is re-connection to the human aspects of work. This involves organizing social events with your co-workers, intermittently forgoing technology and writing a manuscript by hand, working out a tough problem on a white board of chalk board, or reading dozens of papers every day instead of relying on a machine to gather information and synthesize insights.

The second path could be radical creativity. Reading and analyzing research papers from social sciences, from medicine, and from theoretical physics. Choosing papers, or data sets, that are very far away from your field could be the key to the bolt of lighting that comes forth when the dots are connected. This is one area it appears machines cannot yet compete; we can control which data is chosen, the quality of that data, and how we produce the data.

While there are many people who are comfortable with artificial intelligence and where technology is and will go, I personally am not satisfied. By the large amount of unhappy people working in today’s era, I don’t think I am alone.

This article was inspired by discussions with my wife, Wonderland by Steven Johnson, “Rethinking Artificial Intelligence from the Perspective of Interdisciplinary Knowledge Production” by Chan Lu, The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes, and “Why A.I. Won’t Replace Doctor’s (Yet)” by PBS Vitals.