Today’s headline of DeepSeek AI is Free, the Comparable Version of ChatGPT Costs $200 a Month is the forerunner of “DeepThink Is Going To Kill Us All!”. Just you wait and see.
When I was around 32 years old, I started working for a computer wholesaler. My first day on the job I had to cost out a $1.5 Million inventory of computer parts. The inventory count had recently been taken and I had to locate the individual values and write them on 13 Column pad alongside the description and quantity on hand. So each page (of 60 pages) had a part number in column 1,with inventory counts in columns 2 thru 10, for various locations that part was located at. Then Column 11 was the the total inventory counts from col. 2 – 10. Column 12 was the unit cost for one.Column 13 was the Unit Cost times the Total Inventory Count.
As I was able to locate the unit price, I plugged it in and then computed the total cost in column 13. That was the easy part.
Then for a week I kept finding inventory in hidden locations around the country that had to be plugged in and so I kept updating the sheets for new locations and then again for more current prices. This went on for about a week that I kept using an adding machine on those darn columns.
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Five years later I learned how to use the first Spreadsheet program on the market, Multi Plan. That software would have saved me from adding up those 13 column pages at least a thousand times, I kid you not.
Look at where those spreadsheets are today. Not only can they run accounting problems but they can run a chemical plant by turning on and off chemical flows by turning valves.
I always said it increased my mind capacity ten fold because now I was thinking with the use of computers. I felt like I could do anything by making the complex problem simple by writing the programs and then pushing one button to change it all.
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In my mind, three cells in a spreadsheet is a mini program. One to hold an Input number, one to hold a hidden command and one to store the new answer. So for me a spreadsheet was just a hundred small programs.
So with all this newfound brain extension thinking for us, no one ever hollered at me that the Spreadsheets were going to kill us some day. They couldn’t just decide to off us. They could only do as they were told to do – work with numbers and data. That was it. They were unable to get pissed because I was hitting the keys too hard and plan to waste me.
As absurd as this sounds, that is what happens when the word AI is mentioned today – it’s going to kill us! What’s crazy is we are afraid of AI (Artificial Intelligence) killing us but never think about our own governments trying to kill us in cooperation with large corporations.
For a computer to kill us it would have to be a software formula/command written by a crazy evil person. For example, a large dinner palace that is run on software for reservations and kitchen control may have a “glitch”or bug in its program placed there by a recently divorced programmer. When one more person is seated making a total of 50 persons who are either a Divorce Attorney or a Mother-In-Law, all the steamers in the kitchen explode killing everyone. Now I admit, that’s possible but it’s not probable.
That is why at bedtime I never check to see if a modern watch is lurking under the bed waiting to get me. The truth is I’m just too fat to worry about that anymore.
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