AI may change the world, but OI will change your life

Work in Progress by Ivan Morgan

With the increasingly hysterical media coverage of the onset of artificial intelligence (AI) I have decided to make a case for OI – Old Intelligence, otherwise known as wisdom.

All manner of folk have peered into the future, some are excited about the onset of AI and some don’t like what they see. There’s no end of AI coverage in the news, and very little on the value of OI – the wisdom most older people have. Wisdom we have always had and have today.  I think, especially with the onset of AI, more attention on OI is needed.

Youth culture, always obsessed with itself, doesn’t value OI. Old people, often not tech savvy, are considered irrelevant. That might be, but many are savvy in other ways. Tech is useful, but so is basic humanity. We are humans, we need each other, and all this tech tends to isolate people from each other. OI knows the value of shutting off the devices and just hanging out.

Technology is changing fast, but human nature is not. As humans we need OI. The longer you’ve been around the more you have seen. The more you have experienced. The more you know.

When I was a teenager, I volunteered in a senior’s home. Not because I was community minded, but because the boarding school I  was sent to was more or less a prison, and this was a rare opportunity to get out, on a weeknight no less. I had met a girl and on Tuesday nights we would meet at the local mall, go to the seniors home and make out in the laundry closet.  She soon tired of me, but I kept going because it was a chance to be out in the world on Tuesday nights. I started making the rounds visiting the old people.

What I didn’t see coming was how many would become friends. At 16 I began to learn they weren’t old people; they were people. Cool people. I remember four old fellas who would hang out with me when I got there. They had figured out the girl thing, even joking about the laundry room. I was bummed she had dumped me, and they consoled me with stories of girls they had known when they were young – during the Second World War. One of the men had a son who flew 747’s internationally. They had a HAM radio set (Google it) and they could make contact with him, even when he was flying. They taught me how to use it.  It was fun.

They had fought in wars when they were barely older than I was. Some had seen combat. Some had raised families. Some had never had families. All ended up in this grizzly medical warehouse waiting to die. The place was understaffed, dirty and uncaring. But they made the best of it. That’s what men of their generation did. That’s one of the many things I learned from them.

Whatever the reason I originally started volunteering there, I stayed because of their wisdom, their character, and their friendship. I sat through classes every day that whole year, but I don’t remember anything of them.  My old friends however were a different case. I am close to their age now, 50 years later, and I remember each of them and our time together vividly.  That’s the power of OI.

Is the worry over AI overrated? I remember when the internet was deemed to be the great Satan. I remember experts fretting about highspeed internet. Satellite internet. Google, when it came out, was a worry to many. And so it goes.

I know I possess OI.  My OI tells me we will figure out how to use AI. As a species we have seen far worse. My buddies taught me that half a century ago.

If you are worried about AI seek out some OI. AI may change the world, but OI might change your life. It did for me. I learned a lot about life from those men.  I doubt there’s an app that will ever do that.

Ivan Morgan can be reached at ivan.morgan@gmail.com