AI and Generative AI are changing the society and of course all of us
Introduction
I am an engineer all my life. With 10 years old I converted a broken kitchen aid into a flashing and speaking robot by installing lights and a speaker inside. I have started to program my first “computer” a training “micro professor” a one PCB computer with a two digit LCD, beeper (it was not a speaker) and a hexadecimal keypad. Soon, I moved on to the Commodore VC20 and shortly after a VC64. Being 15 years old, I bought all separate electronic components for an Apple IIe in an electronic shop and soldered them on an empty PCB and made my own copy of a that famous Apple IIe computer. With a monochrome Zenith Monitor and a Shugart 5½“ Floppy disk drive, this computer has been a great tool to expand my programming knowledge. It took only 2 month later, that I also soldered my own Z80 expansion board for the Apple IIe computer which allowed me to use the CPM operating system and Software as Wordstar and Turbo Pascal. When I turned 16 years old, our school got as one of the first schools in Germany an “old” computer mainframe from Dietz with two 8” floppy drives and 5 MB exchange hard disks, all gifted by the company Henkel in Düsseldorf. The programming and data input was done by 4 Monitor Terminals and one Terminal Printer. On that System we were able to Program in Fortran77 and Pascal E. We started with a class of 5 Students (Nerds), the first IT class at a German school. We, the students, had so much more knowledge in programming than our teacher that we had a very interesting situation. The trainees trained the teacher.
Later on I changed to the first PC Systems using DOS from Microsoft as operating system and programmed in C, C++ and other programming languages. I still remember my first 10 MB big hard disk, I bought for 10k German Mark. Hell of a money.
I am sharing those memories with you as I want to make sure you all understand, I am a technology affirm person, having a career as service engineer, R&D engineer for machine software, service manager, technical sales engineer and since 17 years as vertical industry manager for industrial automation. A life in the electronics, automation and software industry.
Subject
Even with all this background and being used to constantly learn and to adopt newest technologies, I am at a point of being a kind of afraid of the future. It´s not about AI as a technology. I am using, promoting and selling AI since several years in the industrial environment. It´s used to analyze and optimize machine and process parameters. This helps to improve product qualities, avoid machine breakdowns due to predictive maintenance and to reduce energy consumption improving the CO2 footprint of smart factories. It´s about AI better said generative AI applications within our society.
My boomer generation, that did a lot of hardware and software development and computer repair themselves, has been smiling about the generations of “stupid” Software Users following ours. Only able to use intensively software without knowing what is behind the user interfaces. Still they used the software to create literature, music even art. They created very individual and personal things. All creativity has been in the hands and control of these Users.
Today, we are at the rise of another Industrial revolution. The human generation of Generative AI Users/Marionets. Software, as Chat GPT, is starting to create things out of some stumbled sentences fragments by people. We trust AI to phrase our thoughts in a highly professional way. But it is not only phrasing, it´s even adding things to our input thoughts to make the result even more complete to enrich the output. To phrase it in to one sentence, we are facing a generation that will leave knowledge, creativity and I am afraid even thinking to the software of machines.
Next to the fact that our civilization will be more and more stupid uneducated and only depending on software and machines, the probability that people like Musk, Zuckerberg or any other provider of the technologies will miss use it to guide and influence the population. All this of course under the fake arguments of freedom and improving the quality of life of us people. At the end it´s all about power and getting even more rich. Next to those tech providers also politician as Putin, Kim Jong-un, Xi Jinping, Ali Chamenei or even Trump will use the tools to control the mind of people to their need. We will end up brain washed with now own will or opinion.
You might say I am extremely negative but honestly this is the future I foresee. The signs are there today already. Social media, not only our kids are living in day by day, are flooded with wrong, fake and manipulated information. They influence not only the young generation they even have such a control on to some people, that they start to kill “their neighbors” for no real “own” reasons. (Not that I believe there is ever any reason to kill someone!) Those poor people are getting radicalized for others believes, online.
Actions
To set a sign I left with many others Twitter/X as soon Elon Musk got on board. Now that Zuckerberg is acting as a flag in the wind and copies Musk to make Trump happy by stoping fact check activities and diversity programs, on the META platforms, I have today delete my Facebook and end of February 2025 also my Instagram account. I will for sure miss those social networks but it´s time to set a sign. My hope is that many people will follow my example. I will watch out for more safe alternatives as I am using already successfully Bluesky as a replacement for Twitter/X.
On my own Blog, I have decided to publish NO AI manipulated content. Not in form of pictures, videos or text. I am looking forward to your experience and your honest opinion.
God bless us all for the future and I hope that I will be proven to be totally wrong.