Trying to Turn My Phone Off

I walked into the phone store, trying to exude confidence.

[I think for many of us who are over the age of 40, the phone store inherently feels like a place where young, tech-savvy staff are ready to make us feel like fools from the dinosaur age. When they start making references to mid-20^th century technology, you know you are in trouble. “Well, do you remember how you would dial on a rotary phone that was powered by the hand crank?”]

 

“Can I help you?”

“Yes, I have a problem. I can’t figure out how to turn my phone off.”

First thought of the staff member: “For realz? Another geezer from the stone age!”

Second thought of the staff member: “Why would any human being, at any time, want to turn their phone off?”

Trying to hold back what I sensed was a mixture of laughter and scorn, they asked me to tell them a bit more.

 

Here was the issue. I like having my phone completely off a few times a week. And in a strange twist, the two-button method that used to turn off my phone now turns ON an AI feature.

Take that in for a moment. What a symbol of our world. The buttons that used to help me escape tech had been updated to now draw me into AI.

As you hit those buttons, if you listen close, you hear an evil laugh and the voice from MJ’s Thriller saying, “So you thought you could turn the phone off, huh? You are in the hands of AI now, o little one!”

Well, it turns out that the tech person was not as concerned as I was that AI is taking over the world, one phone and device at a time. In fact, their solution was to hit the two buttons, summoning AI, and then asking AI for permission to turn the phone off. Not quite the answer I was looking for.

 

I am skeptical of AI in a big way. I sense that our world, akin to my phone, is going to push AI on us without our permission. Scratch that. I sense that our world is already pushing AI on us without our permission.

It is up to us – the rotary phone powered by a crank – folks to think critically about the value of being able to…well, being able to turn our phone off.