The Golden Age. The Golden Age refers to the peak period of interest for a specific “thing”, i.e. the Golden Age of Television, the Golden Age of Rock or the Golden Age of Computers, etc.
As a GenXer I’ve lived through a few Golden Ages. Hip hop, Rap music, the computer, the Internet, VCRs, CDs, DVDs, Cable TV, social media, streaming and the mobile phone to name a few.
It is important to recognize and appreciate these periods as you live through them. It really is and I’ll tell you why. Whether you realize it or not these respective Golden Ages can open the gate to the elusive and much desired “fountain of youth”.
As we age we tend to lose patience and interest in the culture of the younger generations. Many times it is the younger generation of innovators that advance society forward. Those who are reluctant to study, learn and appreciate the inevitable changes usually get left behind. Like it or not, this phenomenon is also known as aging. It happens to us all.
I’ve missed a Golden Age or two. I admit it. So, nowadays I try to keep my eyes open for the latest greatest and the next best thing. Enter artificial intelligence.
Artificial intelligence, or AI as it is known, has actually been around for more than 50 years as a government and military resource. By AI’s own account it began to become a public resource in the early 2000s. Sometime around the COVID pandemic is when I started paying attention to the increasing usage of the technology. Totally ignored it though. And then……
I noticed that any time I’d ask my sons questions about anything they would have these long detailed answers that I was not accustomed to hearing. Whenever I would search for anything they would have the information much faster than me. Then my oldest son told me he used Chatgpt instead of traditional browsers. My response was “What? What is Chatgpt? This was a few years ago and my sons were in their early twenties. I was over fifty at the time. See what I’m sayin’?
I started using AI tools mainly as an informational resource. My fascination grew somewhat reluctantly. My perspective changed as I allowed myself to realize that AI wasn’t diminishing how much I used my own brain, it allowed me to use my own brain faster and more efficiently, therefore saving me time. And guess what? One of the affects of aging is losing time exponentially, meaning two things: having less time to use AND needing more time relative to tasks to complete. See where I’m going with this?
AI is all over the place now, living and functioning in every instance where humans interact with technology. I’ve used it for math, history, to create flyers and images, to seek health habits and exercise plans specific to me, as a daily planner, for professional and educational forecasting, financial planning, you name it.
There is a limit however. I do not use it for creative purposes. Absolutely none of my writings, stories, poetry or music contain any AI generated content. When I express my thoughts, my emotions, my vision and my heart, I don’t want them to be sanitized by being processed through what amounts to be essentially a series of electronic ones and zeros with no human soul. There is an AI tool for musicians called Suno that literally can create a song from scratch for you using very minimal input. I have not used it and certainly do not want to hear a commercially released song based on it.
But as a tool to assist with a required task AI has become indispensable. It is the present and the future. It saves me time while also increasing my productivity and learning capacity. And while it had absolutely no reasonable answer for how I could make myself instantly look younger the next time I looked into a mirror, AI provides more time to complete tasks while simultaneously demanding less time to do so. Having more time is the essence of wanting to be young again, right? So why wouldn’t we use AI?
The Real Life Corner 