AI skeptic becomes born-again bot-botherer

I say I have built these things when, in fact, this remarkable pace of development and implementation would not have been possible without a new-found superpower, about which I am a little embarrassed.

If a regular reader of this column, you may recall my misgivings about the very thing that has enabled my recent, prolific output, criticising it for its “soul-less efficiency” and being “over-rationalised”, whilst encouraging an “ersatz existence”. Furthermore, I am on the record speaking of the “cold regurgitation of lifeless information”, the “dreaded tech” and “mechanistic tyranny”, urging us all not to lose our humanity to the “online information machine”.

However it turns out, my new productivity best mate is that very machine, AI, and I have to own that fact that I am a born-again bot-botherer, having dabbled in what I said was a dark art, only to find enlightenment and value on the slippery slope of the information superhighway, which has welcomed me fully even as a learner driver.

Sure, I have reservations and revelations on the grander levels of ethics, economics and environmental impact, but when it comes to technological efficiency, I am ‘sold’. All it took was a few hypey YouTube videos and Google’s gateway drug of its ‘workspace’ product, and I was hooked enough to first redesign my business website and, thereafter, launch a new project to showcase my newfound excitement, enthusiasm and knowledge.

The big turning point came in the shape of an online app-builder, Base44, whose ads you may have seen before, before the videos you really want to watch online. They describe themselves as “the ultimate accelerator for the ‘Idea-to-Product’ lifecycle, stripping away the friction of traditional software development while providing a ‘safe space for ideas to grow’”.

Well, they are spot on with that pitch, proven by a simple ‘prompt’ one Sunday afternoon to create a “Landing page for Carl Munson – the ‘first person to speak to in Portugal’ – based on his consultancy work with Good Morning Portugal! and Expats Portugal”. Those 25 words produced, in seconds, the most astonishing website, which only months ago would have taken weeks and cost thousands of euros.

To call what it produced a ‘head-start’ would be a massive understatement. The result was nothing short of magical to my technologically-limited self, and a near-finished product, which I could then take great pleasure and edification editing and honing to perfection.

On more than one occasion, I called Mrs M into the kitchen to see the web-based wonder on my very basic PC, the one I use to listen to podcasts and check my email, whilst going about my domestic duties. In the hours that followed, alternating my attention with cooking the family dinner and spinning around the room like Cinderella, I edited text, added bells (literally a WhatsApp phone connection) and whistles, generated and changed images, all without code or skill beyond that needed for word processing. Effectively, I was just typing in instructions and asking the built-in AI what to do when I got stuck or needed inspiration or direction.

And strangely enough, I didn’t even want a new website. I just used my own somewhat half-hearted consultancy service as what web developers call a ‘use case’, basically making myself my own case study to see what the online, cloud-based software could do.

The process was also a test of my patience, attention span and technical prowess, which are all very limited, making the results even more astounding. If you care to look at ‘exhibit A’, or should I say ‘exhibit AI’, you will see the fruit of a short labour of love, which others (who I proudly sent it to) also agreed was very impressive and professional-looking.

With my limited personal and technological capabilities, I was able to buy and connect a new web domain (i.e. www.portugaltalk.com), add a chatbot, create a ticker-tape of my latest videos and articles, integrate my diary to automate consultations, import testimonials from an old website, and connect my social media platforms. I was delighted and gobsmacked in equal measure, experiencing such ease in creation and publication.

Not content with this easy-win, I researched more platforms, ‘automations’ and ‘agents’ in the days that followed, consuming hours of YouTube videos, ‘AI-mersing’ myself in the new technology that once offended me, in my ignorance, experimenting with interventions and innovations in as many aspects of my life and business as time and energy would allow.

Clearly, my earlier neo-Luddite reactions were transforming into a healthy curiosity, having seen tangible and beneficial results in my own experience, putting my conceptual and ideological judgments to one side.

AI, and I, by that I mean the sum total of cutting edge tech tools, which will no doubt transform our world soon, rapidly and maybe beyond recognition, is a remarkable device that we can, and should, use – just as it will be using us, as the assets of the tech overlords, who are currently letting us play with their creations.

Anyone with a wish to stay curious, relevant and on the same wavelength as their grandkids, is well advised to take a look under the hood, as I have done to basically keep up, have some fun, and even look at the income-generating potential of this information revolution machine.

This next step for the internet will be profoundly more transformational than the steam engine was in the industrial revolution; just as machines replaced muscles then, AI machines will replace brains, or at least a large part of them, which cannot compete with its complexity, speed and indifference.

On the same day I effortlessly ‘created’ that website, I journalled about my realisations. “My father never owned a computer,” I wrote, “my young kids live on theirs. I am somewhere in between those generations, and realise a BIG, next step is upon us, in the vast shape of AI.”

I want to share what I have learned and continue to learn with others, compare notes, and enjoy what I see as AI’s greatest gift: the greater enjoyment of life and realising what it truly means to be human, which I have said all along, even as my tactical relationship to it has evolved.

Some of us, those of a certain age, will go the way of my father, untouched. Some will be massively inconvenienced by unwillingness. And some will prosper beyond measure by making an effort and going against the force of habit.

For those that want to embrace the technology and see what’s possible, I went and prompted my app-builder again, asking it to create a community for over-50s who want to keep up, have fun and even earn some income with AI, and this is what we came up with – www.aioldguycarl.com

Come and join us, if that’s you.

Read Carl Munson’s previous article: Miles to Portugal: A New Yorker’s magical, musical journey arrives in Lisbon