“The combination of the seemingly global decrease in human cognitive ability happening at the exact same moment that our machines are becoming smarter exponentially is a major existential threat to humanity’s existence on this planet.”
Jonathan Haidt, The Times

Years ago – say 1973, when I was articling and living at Pestalozzi College on Rideau Street in Ottawa – I recall having seen a screen portraying what was called Pac-Man.

Pac-Man | trademark an electronic video game in which a player attempts to guide a voracious, blob-shaped character through a maze while eluding attacks from opposing images which it may in turn devour. It is also the name of the blob-shaped character itself.

I tried playing the game but it didn’t retain my interest. I got more amusement at a golf range. I certainly hadn’t imagined that video games would destroy my cognitive ability. It was just hopelessly repetitive. What it is that disturbs people about these machinations (from the Latin machinatio meaning “contrived”) – my new word for these technical schemes? The only thing I remember in particular was my curiosity about how the game was manufactured in the first place – a rudimentary enquiry which to this day I attach to cars and technology (including naturally the modern desktop computer, smartphone and laptop computer).

Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, an 18th-century Swiss educator, championed the principle of “sense impression,” emphasizing that clear thinking stems from accurate observation of real-world objects. His educational approach stressed experiential learning through drawing, writing, singing, physical exercise, group recitations, models, collections, map-making, and field trips. His emphasis on individualized instruction and ability-based groupings was groundbreaking for his era.

Though Pestalozzi College Inc. went bankrupt and fell into receivership, I have a far greater and more stimulating recollection of it than I do of Pac-Man.  It was a time of pure sobriety on every level on my part as I undertook a revival of my old self from the abuse of my law school days (when peanut butter and beer constituted my favourites). I cycled an average of 30 Kms a day and lost 50 pounds. Most of my food was raw vegetables and fruit. I was probably smoking a pack a day of Winston cigarettes as well. But I wasn’t snared to a computer playing Pac-Man.

Jumping ahead 53 years I haven’t any fear of computers or Artificial Intelligence (AI). I have used AI to my advantage – not to create from scratch but to improve where possible.  I liken the AI process to investigating the meaning or etymology of a word through a dictionary. And, yes, I have my favourites – Oxford being the first; Webster the least. I have attempted to have AI create something on its own, based upon my expressed parameters, but it proved unsatisfactory without my initial capital (though I thankfully recognize AI’s ability to capture a clever turn of phrase).

When reading the article (sent to me by me erstwhile physician) concerning Jonathan Haidt in The Times, I was left only with the same impression I get from reading about politics; that is, a lot of worrisome rhetoric without any useful discussion of the base issue. If one is dismissing Artificial Intelligence as a threat, then I need something more than conjecture. An analytical study of the tendencies of youth to engage themselves in fruitless enterprise may be a newly formed database; but I can’t imagine that the character of youth has changed that much in that respect. Certainly the objects of amusement have changed from hula hoops (used by children and adults since 500 BC) and frisbees. But in every ensuing example of preoccupation, none of them has lingered beyond the evolving bounds of human cognition. Curiosity has a dramatic influence upon the mind. It poisons the lurid attraction to repetition, abbreviation and entertainment. In some instances, the deferral is longer than others. But such is the nature of any growth wherever the seeds may be cast. If modern technology in all its commercial manifestations is characterized as threatening, I point to Pac-Man. Pac-Man is now basically a thing of the past; but at the time it illustrated the possibility of a computer, possibilities that translated into far more productive purposes than a game.

Having been a smoker for much of my life (until 65 years), I am familiar with the threat of habit. But smoking had more obvious perils, complaints that were documented. I am not resisting technological threat as unwarranted, rather as undocumented. The debate is especially difficult for me because I can by contrast numerate many advantages of growing technology including AI. From a purely academic perspective I have yet to read any detail of the direct contamination of technology. Unhappily there will always be children who adapt less comfortably than others to the cognitive process. There will always be mothers who demand the television (or computer or smartphone or laptop) be turned off. There will always be children who are bored and who cling to changing slides for distraction. There will always be choices to be made, behaviour to be improved or modified.

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I think this is among your stronger reflective essays. It is less about AI than about the continuity of human nature—a theme that quietly emerges by the end. The closing sentence, in particular, gives the piece a firm landing without sounding polemical. It also echoes your lifelong habit of treating technology as something to be mastered rather than feared.