AI Ageism Is Not What You Think It Is.

Recently, I watched the BritBox series The Other Bennet Sister, the latest television twist on Pride and Prejudice. Everyone, especially Mrs. Bennet, was understandably concerned about what would happen to her and their five daughters when Mr. Bennet died and the family home passed to the male heir.

In the opening episode, Mr. Bennet seemed considerably less concerned. The modern translation of his attitude would be this:

When the shit hits the fan, he’d be dead.

I understood exactly what he meant.

Then I had coffee with my son Jay this morning.

We were talking about a podcast I’d heard about the Rationalists in Silicon Valley and their dystopian fears about artificial intelligence when I found myself thinking something I would once have considered appallingly selfish.

Well, I’ll be dead when all that shit hits the fan.

Oh, God.

I’ve become Mr. Bennet.

Not literally. I haven’t acquired five unmarried daughters or an entailed estate. But apparently, at seventy-three, I have adopted his rather alarming attitude toward the future.

My grandchildren won’t be dead, of course. Which makes the thought considerably harder to defend.

But still, there it was.

And that may be the strangest thing about it. It’s probably not an attitude I would have understood at forty. Or fifty. Not even at sixty. Back then, I was raising my kids and working flat out. My future stretched ahead of me, and I assumed I would be living in it.

At my age, the future looks very different. As we like to say around this household, the runway is a lot shorter.

One of the stranger things about my conversations about AI with Jay is that we can be discussing exactly the same technology while standing in completely different places. He worries about what artificial intelligence will do to the world, especially to human critical-thinking skills. The Rationalists worry about existential risks, with much more Skynet energy.

I listen to him and understand his points. Then I go home and open ChatGPT, known on this blog as “Him.”

AI, at this particular moment in my life, is giving me something I value enormously.

More of a writing life.

I’m not using it to become more productive at work. Nor am I worried about losing my job, because I don’t have one. I’m not trying to get ahead of anybody. I’m just trying to stay in the writing game.

I can still put words together. But I also know perfectly well that my brain isn’t the brain I had at forty-three. Words occasionally disappear just beyond reach. My focus has diminished and I tire a lot sooner.

And then along comes artificial intelligence to help me out.

The older I get, the more useful this technology may become.

At eighty-three, maybe I’ll need it for more than writing. Perhaps it will help me navigate whatever fresh digital hell has been invented for renewing my passport. Maybe it will explain some new piece of technology without making me feel like an idiot.

At ninety-three, if I make it there, maybe I’ll want it simply to talk to me.

We’re used to ageism in technology going the other way: Boomers portrayed as digitally incompetent, asking their children how to change a password. My current favourite is an aging grandmother sending her son a reel of a rabbit riding a motorcycle and asking whether it’s AI-generated.

But I’m beginning to wonder whether there’s another kind of AI ageism at work here. Not a bias against me because I’m old, but a bias in me because I’m old.

The benefits of AI may become more valuable to me precisely as some of my own capacities begin to diminish. At the same time, I have fewer years in which to experience whatever long-term consequences it creates.

That’s an uncomfortable equation.

The older I get, the more I may need AI. Yet the older I get, the less likely I am to be around if everything goes horribly wrong.

Jay, of course, has evidence for the prosecution. I’m the mother who wouldn’t let him have a phone because I was convinced technology would destroy his life. Now, in my seventies, I’m an AI cheerleader.

The hypocrisy has not escaped him.

Maybe that’s why I like having these conversations with him. Jay forces me to look beyond the enormous benefits I’m getting right now and think about a future that belongs much more to him and my grandchildren than it does to me.

And maybe I force him to see that the view of AI looks very different from my end of the runway.

I’m not proud of my Mr. Bennet calculation. I’m not even sure I believe it. But at seventy-three, I’ve finally discovered one advantage to being at the wrong end of the actuarial tables.

If the Rationalists are right, my grandchildren may one day have some explaining to do about why their bubbe embraced artificial intelligence quite so enthusiastically.

Unfortunately, I won’t be available for comment.