The explosive adoption of AI chatbots is without precedent.  The closest historical analogue would be the adoption of the internet itself, but that was  more gradual, and less invasive.  OpenAI alone—the most popular chatbot—now has 800 million users; and a recent Internet Matters survey of 1000 UK children showed that 64% of those 9-17 years old have used chatbots.  Children under 9 are beginning to use it too. Among teenagers this usage is often daily, sometimes for hours at a time.

There have been some sensational news stories about teenagers who have committed suicide with the assistance of their chatbots, … Read More

For many of the billion people world-wide who now engage in conversation with a chatbot, the chatbot has become a person—a friend, a therapist, an advisor, even a romantic partner.  Because chatbots are designed to be guided by whatever text the user types, the user is the source of how it responds. If the user wants the chatbot to be a person, it will do its best to comply.  Chatbots are designed by their makers to be soothing and agreeable.  Pose a question and the chatbot will say, “That’s a great question!” It almost never says, “That’s the wrong question.” … Read More

Can robots be kind? This is one of many questions we will want to know the answer as robots continue to develop.  Robots will be much more prevalent in coming years—in industry, health care, transportation, medicine, and in the home.  Japan probably has the most advanced homecare robots today, helping the elderly with everyday tasks; undoubtedly these robots are programmed to behave in a kind way, with a soothing voice, gentle touch, and a relaxed pace.  In the U.S. there are already videos showing home robots making omelets, folding clothes, and vacuuming the living room. 

Undoubtedly such robots can appear … Read More

It first hit us during Covid—with face masks, social distancing, and Zoom—but it’s been building for a long time.  I mean the way technology,  AI (Artificial Intelligence) and the internet are robbing us all of face-to-face, touch-to-touch, and breath-to-breath intimacy.  That kind of closeness has been our birthright as human beings for two million years, and suddenly, in the space of a historical instant, we are being robbed of it.  I remember reading an article by a man reflecting on his Covid experience; he said that the thing he missed most during Covid was dapping—the elaborate multipart handshake  that wordlessly … Read More

With heat records falling all over the world, July 2023 was the warmest month in history, and not by a little.  Residents of Phoenix endured over a month of highs in excess of 110 degrees, and that’s just one small example.  We have just seen the scenes of incredible devastation in Lahaina, Hawaii, where a wildfire, fueled by hurricane-force winds and tinder-dry invasive grasses, burned the entire city to the ground.  With all these warnings of deadly heat I’m surprised no-one has suggested that it may be our destiny, as the planet continues to heat up, to start living underground.  … Read More

In a blog post on the bicyclist site The Spoke and Word, blogger JHCIACB writes, “I’ll say from the get-go that I think the idea of celebrity is among the most corrosive and destructive conditions in western culture.”  I have had this feeling for some time.  We have always had celebrity—think of the movie stars of the thirties and forties—but now, with the internet and social media, a pop performer or web influencer can have a following of tens of millions or more, much more.  When the Youtube video “Gangnam Style” by Korean pop star Psy hit the webwaves a … Read More

Do you find the ordinary act of reading the daily news depressing? I do.  Every article, it seems, is about some crisis, tragedy, war, death, torture and destruction.  My friends will say, don’t be so sensitive, it’s always been that way.  News people have an old saying: If it bleeds, it leads.  I know all that, but I seem to remember a time—and I don’t think it’s a false Pollyanna memory—when the news wasn’t this bad, when there were also stories of uplift, inspiration, and heroic upstanding behavior.  I have read that some psychologists who study these things say that … Read More

Recently I came across a NY Times article about the Dutch concept of niksen, which literally means “doing nothing.”  Then I found this article on Big Think on the same subject. As a long-time practitioner and teacher of Buddhism and Zen meditation, this piqued my interest, since “doing nothing” sounds, superficially at least, like meditation.  When I was younger I lived and practiced for 12 years in a Zen monastery and then in a residential Buddhist retreat center, where I spent several hours every day sitting on a meditation cushion, literally “doing nothing,”   so I suppose I am well-versed in … Read More

I have been reflecting recently on the many inequities of medical care—both in this country and the world at large. America is supposed to have the most advanced medical care, and it does have some of the top-rated hospitals, but the reality is that whether or not someone receives top medical care depends on geography, income, insurance, race, and gender.
I am only alive today because at one time in my life when I was critically ill, I received medical care that would probably not be available to most people. Let’s start with geography. I live in the San Francisco … Read More

These days I keep coming across articles that paint a revised and very different picture of indigenous civilizations in America than the ones we are used to or have grown up with. This latest one has to do with horses. Apparently, for centuries it has been an article of faith and historical “fact” that indigenous Americans learned about horses—how to ride them, how to raise them—from the Spanish who settled the Southwest. Now, due to a combination of high-tech analysis of horse bones combined with actually listening to the oral histories still alive and present in today’s indigenous peoples, historians … Read More