Matter, Rocks, and Hard Places

I grew up in coal-mining country—see the forthcoming Trouble for a fictional variant—so perhaps that influenced the Americana we were taught in school. "John Henry versus the Steam Drill" was pretty well-known to me and my contemporaries from childhood onward, the battle of man versus machine. This legend doesn't end joyfully, unlike most American stories of Great Men Doing Great Things. John Henry would have been smarter to not go up against such an opponent, but then we wouldn't have the (tragic) tale of a man facing an impossible task, and the promise of a machine that could ease all the troubles away... for the tunnel's owner, anyway. It's bad luck for the hired help.

I don't think we were being prepared for this particular world of LLMs and content-at-a-finger-press, but here we are. On reflection, there's a number of grim, accidental lessons of that story like "work hard, die anyway" or more bluntly, "capitalism kills." This is not a sweet sing-along for the kiddies. Also, it didn't leave me prepared to be both pick-swinger and drill-operator, at different points in my day.

As much raging as I do against LLMs and models, in true-confession fashion, I'm also using them in my day job. And it's a matter of survival, this. All industries are being shaped and shaken by this change, and although I'm having a lot of dotcom-boom deja-vu (Webvan, anyone?) I can't afford to pretend, will, or wish this away. The drill's here, it's making a might racket, and pick-swingers better pay attention. It doesn't end well. I'm still wrapping my head around embracing a technology professionally while essentially rejecting it personally.

What I'm focusing on is (re)discovering what matters, what's important, and what I value. This is all a little in-touch-with-my-feelings Californian, but it is true. I actually don't mind firing up the LLMs at work, because what I'm doing at work is, well, digging tunnels. As proud as John Henry was, I doubt he genuinely loved the literal backbreaking labor of the act. Did he aspire to be a sculptor? A poet? A painter? We don't get to hear much about his personal life, just in his noble-yet-tragic end. I'm trying not for such a dramatic end. One lesson from the Covid-19 lockdown was how we affix value to our time, and the ways we prioritize our days. It's one of the (ongoing) reasons why office life looks and feels so different now. For a good while, everyone was forced to put down the drills and go home and try to stay sane. Bake, or write, or just exist for a while. And even five years later I don't think we're shaking that off.

Maybe I'll write an alternate-history story about what happened if LLMs rose, but a global pandemic did not. Would the people rise up, demanding that their work not be replaced by the technology? Would we still fight for it, or against it, up against the proverbial rock face? Would people push back against the shiny promises of the miracle machines? When pressed, what would we do?