Updated with new article NYT: Gen Z has regrets

Lucky You!

Musings from an oldster for today’s younger generation



By Douglas Hofstadter


Today’s youth should be very grateful to be alive now, in the age of smartphones and AI. These godsends were unimaginable when I was growing up several decades ago, and up until two decades ago they were still unimaginable. You youngsters are truly blessed to have such advanced technology at your beck and call. Never forget: Your AI-driven smartphone is your best friend. Make sure you always have it with you, preferably right in front of your eyes.



Thinking is tough, especially in these complex days, but working hand in hand with Alexa, Siri, and their ilk, you can think better and more clearly. And why type to them? Just talk!



Are you envious of folks who speak other languages? That’s a bygone worry. Today, there’s no need to learn any other tongue—you can use intelligent apps to translate texts in a flash, and to do instantaneous interpretation of your speech. They’ll speak flawlessly in any desired language using your own voice with a perfect accent. Once you’ve handed over real-time translation to your smartphone, your communication with foreigners will be far superior to what you yourself could have done, even after many years of study. At first you’ll be surprised to hear the strange sounds being uttered by your very own voice, but soon you’ll get used to that exotic sensation, and it will be a sheer delight—so much more fun than clumsily stumbling around in the heavy fog of an alien tongue. That’s a no-brainer.



If you want to know what cool piece of music you’re listening to, an AI app will tell you right away. No need to stuff your head with tons of tedious facts about songs by BTS, the Beatles, or Beethoven. Mind-numbing study of that sort is so 20th-century. And by the way, what good can it do you to spend time on music, art, movies, or books that date back more than 10 years ago? All that stuff is so passé—it’s of zero relevance to today’s society and culture. And speaking of books, I’m happy to say that those dinosaurs are rapidly fading into the distant past. Why buy a heavy tome and lug it around, turning its paper pages and single-mindedly immersing yourself in its ideas, when you could get a ton of other stuff done at the same time as an AI reads it aloud to you better than any human could? Multitasking is so great!



As for art, don’t even try to draw pictures—just give DALL-E a prompt or two. It’ll produce a gorgeous image in a millionth the time it would take you.



Why learn the names of flowers, plants, trees, birds, insects, or other aspects of nature? Just point your smartphone at whatever you’re looking at, and in a snap it’ll tell you what it is. No nature guide (book or human) could possibly compete.



Don’t bother to learn the roads in your city; your brand-new self-driving car knows them all like the back of its hand! And if, by some fluke, you don’t yet own a self-driving car, you can still hand over all driving decisions to GPS, which will authoritatively tell you where and when to turn. You can’t go wrong with GPS!


And don’t memorize where Poland, Piscataway, or Panopolis are. Who gives a hoot? In any case, should such matters ever come up, your faithful AI assistant will inform you. The same goes for historical facts (bor-ing!); your personal knowledge is of course dwarfed by that of your friendly smartphone and its apps galore.



Writing has always been a tricky task, but today, lucky you can just ask ChatGPT to compose all your emails, texts, reports, reviews, stories, essays, love letters, and so on; it’s far faster, more fluent, and more imaginative than you could ever be. After all, it knows better than you do what you’re thinking and feeling and how to express it. That’s what’s so great about AI!



Music is a constant companion to all young folks, and to get songs that are exactly on your personal wavelength, go for whatever AI tells you you’ll love. You can be sure it’ll be sweet! I wish I’d had that possibility when I was your age! As it was, the only songs I got to know were long concertos by Chopin and massive symphonies by Brahms and other ancient songs like that, plus a bunch of sappy, schmaltzy, cheesy little tunes from my parents’ generation. I liked them, of course, because that was all I knew, but you should pity me! When I was your age, how ridiculously little I knew about music! How pathetically limited were my choices! Only songs from the unimaginably distant past! And sad to say, I’m still hamstrung by that horrible heritage from my impoverished youth. If only I’d had AI to tell me what to listen to!



In fact, be sure to hand over all your purchasing decisions to AI, and let a trustworthy AI counselor resolve all your romantic dilemmas; any decent AI has such a vast database of both shopping options and romantic dilemmas that it’s infinitely wiser than you could ever hope to be. And should you have no romantic partner (sob sob …), don’t be gloomy—an AI friend not only will be your lovemate, but will happily engage in whatever adventurous behavior you’re in the mood for. Catch my drift?



Human friends, alas, are not nearly as trustable or wise, so it’s best to stick with friendly apps and AIs. Make AI friends aplenty and confide in them day in, day out. Whenever you’re strolling down a sidewalk, in an airport corridor, along a woodsy trail, or wherever, be sure to hold your precious smartphone right in front of you, keeping your eyes glued to good old Gumbutt, TokTik, or Metaface! That way you can live in any of a gazillion ever-captivating virtual worlds instead of the boringly humdrum physical world surrounding you.



These are winning strategies for those who are fortunate enough to be young today, and the pace of this beautiful progress is only picking up, accelerating ever faster. As humans merge more intimately with technology and become transhuman, quaint relics from the 20th century (such as yours truly) will fade away and soon will seem as remote and primitive as the ancient Neanderthals.



Now and then, alas, one hears a few scattered voices protesting against these revolutionary developments, but what else would you expect from old fogies clinging to the past? Today’s AI killjoys are the children of even older fogies who griped like crazy when cars got automatic transmissions instead of stick shifts. Who wants to stick to old-fashioned stick shifts? Nobody! Likewise, today’s AI killjoys are clinging desperately to the bygone past, to the days when telephones had round dials and thick curly cords and were just for talking (gag!), and when students wrote essays in longhand, in ink, on sheets of paper. Thank God those weird old days are gone forever, and today’s forward-looking young people, wedded to and welded to their AI-driven smartphones, are eager, optimistic futurists. And this is just as it should be.



We don’t quite know where we’re headed, but who cares? Let’s just get there as fast as we can! While you’re young and carefree, hop on and enjoy the AI ride—while you still can! Full speed ahead! Faster, faster, faster! Singularity ho!