I am not one of those people who think artificial intelligence (AI) will be the end of civilization. Yes, there is legitimate concern about a Skynet situation, but that concern is remote, at least for now.
The immediate concern is related to employment. Will AI replace millions upon millions of Americans in the workforce? Probably, in some industries. But we’ve been here before: as technology advances, the old industries are aged out of existence — not too many buggy makers around since the advent of the auto industry, for example.
People didn’t starve to death for lack of work. Yes, businesses closed, but new ones started up. The beauty of human beings — in particular capitalism, which allows human beings to truly be creative and flourish — is that we can adapt. We, unlike all other animals, find ways to take advantage of a given situation and create something new. This creativity is spurred most fervently when necessary. AI may well make it necessary.
AI will spawn many millionaires and billionaires, not only within the industry, but outside of it. People will get rich and create jobs that have nothing to do with AI, but will do it because of AI.
We just aren’t there yet.
Over the last few years, I have “written” a column using AI — specifically ChatGPT — to see how it is advancing. In the past, it was pretty OK, not great. This year is no different.
Let me say, I don’t use AI for anything but this sort-of-annual column. I should, if only for grammar, but I don’t want to put the editors out of business.
Other than curiosity, I don’t currently have a use for AI — I prefer to do my own research and read the source material over a summary. That doesn’t make me better than those who do; it’s just how I prefer to roll — I can answer questions about what I say and believe, not what some code burps out.
In the past, the ChatGPT column was fine. Short, but fine. It didn’t really capture humor or nuance, what I would consider to be my voice, and it still doesn’t. But this year’s version is better than those in the past.
The only prompt I gave it was to write a column “in the style of Derek Hunter” and it be on the subject of the national debt.
It’s fine; I’ll post it below, but it’s boring and devoid of humanity. You can tell a robot wrote it, as it is lifeless. More than that, it’s not from something that seems to have ever had life in it. All the code in the world can’t replicate experience and firsthand memory.
But judge for yourself and see what you think. It’s coherent-ish and has arguments I agree with, even if I wouldn’t have made them the way it did. Maybe it was the choice of subject matter — maybe next time I’ll choose to have it write about the “trans” issue and see how it rolls on that one. But it was debt this time, as we just passed $40 trillion and no one — from the president to any Republican or Democrat — seems to be bothered by it.
Without any further ado, here is AI “me” opining on the national debt. What do you think?
"The National Debt Is Everyone’s Problem, Until It Isn’t
There is a wonderful little trick we’ve perfected in Washington: spend money today, send the bill to someone else, and then congratulate ourselves for being compassionate.
That someone else, of course, is usually the American taxpayer. And increasingly, it’s the American taxpayer’s children and grandchildren.
The national debt has passed the point where it can be treated as some abstract number on a government website. It is real money. We owe it. We pay interest on it. And unlike the promises politicians make during campaign season, the bill doesn’t disappear after Election Day.
The maddening part is that almost nobody in Washington actually talks about the debt as a problem that requires sacrifice. Republicans complain about Democratic spending. Democrats complain about Republican tax cuts. Both sides then discover a sudden, urgent national priority that requires another few trillion dollars.
It turns out the only truly bipartisan principle in Washington is that there is always more money to spend.
And if you suggest spending less, you are immediately asked which grandmother, veteran, child, farmer, student, worker or endangered species you intend to throw into the street.
This is how the game works. Every dollar of government spending has a constituency. The cost of that spending is spread across more than 300 million Americans, many of whom don't know what they are paying for. The benefit, meanwhile, is concentrated among people who know exactly what they're getting.
That is a pretty good business model if your goal is to keep spending.
The debt itself is not inherently evil. Governments borrow money for legitimate reasons. Families take out mortgages. Businesses borrow to invest. The problem comes when borrowing stops being a tool and becomes a lifestyle.
America isn't borrowing primarily to build the equivalent of a national business that will someday pay us back. We're borrowing because the government routinely spends more than it takes in—and because telling voters 'no' is harder than handing them something and pretending the bill doesn't exist.
Eventually, arithmetic gets a vote.
It doesn't care whether you're a Republican or Democrat. It doesn't care about your campaign slogan. It doesn't care how many flags are behind you at the press conference.
Debt has one particularly obnoxious characteristic: interest must be paid.
And every dollar sent to service yesterday's borrowing is a dollar that can't be spent on something else tomorrow. At some point, that becomes less a matter of ideology and more a matter of arithmetic.
We should probably stop pretending that the problem can be solved by taxing the rich, cutting foreign aid, eliminating waste, or finding a few billion dollars of fraudulent spending. Those things may be worth doing, but they don't solve a problem measured in trillions.
The uncomfortable truth is that serious debt reduction requires serious choices.
That means politicians would have to tell people they can't have every benefit they want from government while simultaneously demanding that everyone else pay less. It means voters would have to accept that 'free' government programs aren't free. It means both parties would have to identify things they like and admit that liking something doesn't make it affordable.
That last part may be the hardest.
We have spent decades teaching ourselves that government can solve every problem, subsidize every preference and protect every interest group. Now we're discovering that the government has been writing checks with tomorrow's money.
Tomorrow has finally started sending collection notices.
The national debt isn't a Republican problem or a Democratic problem. It's an American problem.
And eventually, if we keep refusing to deal with it, it won't be a problem we get to choose whether to deal with.
It will choose for us."
The real Derek Hunter is the host of the Derek Hunter Show on WMAL in Washington, D.C., and has a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book, "Outrage, INC.," which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F***ing Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.